15

Coffey propelled me along the pavement, leaning into me as if we were pals who’d had too much to drink. I could smell the gin and peppermint on his breath.

The point of the knife had penetrated through my jacket and shirt and was pressing against the hardier fabric of my cilice. One small push and the blade would pierce my skin. Just stopping suddenly would probably be enough. I kept walking, watching my step on the paving.

‘Where is she?’ he asked again. ‘What have you done with her?’

‘Do you mean Mrs Drake?’ My voice was quivering and pitching upwards. ‘We spoke, that’s all. I tried to help her, but she left with two strangers.’

Surely, I thought, he can’t kill me here, with so many people around us. I might be better served by refusing to go any further, daring him to stab me, rather than being led obediently away to die in some alley.

But I wasn’t brave enough.

I felt the pressure in my back ease and then disappear. Coffey wiped his empty sleeve across his face.

‘She shouldn’t be on her own,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s not safe. I only want to know she’s all right.’

‘She seems able to look after herself.’

He gave me a look that said he thought me naïve and foolish. ‘You don’t get it. Underneath all that jibber-jabber, she’s frightened of her own shadow. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be …’ he stopped himself and closed his eyes. ‘It’s like Mr Lampton says. Ladies need the help of a gentleman to shore up their delicate natures.’

I’d just seen Elspeth Drake extract half a crown from a stranger as neatly as a starling pecks a caterpillar out of a log. Her nature seemed anything but delicate. And what of Rosie and Constance and my sister Jane and the only girl I had ever loved, with curly hair, a mark on her face like blackberry juice and heels that thump thump thumped against the frame of the bed? Not one of them possessed a delicate nature as far as I could tell. Not to mention Sister Agnes.

‘You saw the wrestling. Did Irina Vostek seem weak to you?’

Coffey rolled his eyes. ‘She’s not as strong as she looks, believe me. Making women wrestle is an offence against God.’

He shoved me away, slipping the knife quickly into his pocket, though not before I could see its design, which was stubby and brutal, fitting between the fingers of his fist like a corkscrew. If he had punched me, I would have been gouged to shreds.

‘What will you do now?’ I asked him.

He bit his lip, looking both ways along the pavement. ‘I’m reopening the gaff tonight. Come along if you want.’ He had the decency to look sheepish. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me my hastiness just now. No hard feelings. I’m worried about Elsie, that’s all. It’s men like us have to look out for girls like her.’

He puffed out his chest and some perverse part of me was tempted to tell him the truth about myself. It would be suicide, but in the brief second before he stuck me with that knife, I would enjoy seeing his expression.

He turned to go, but something was still bothering me.

‘Wait! Mr Coffey!’ He looked round with a furtive glance, and I had the impression he didn’t like his name being used in public. ‘Mr Coffey,’ I repeated more loudly, getting my small revenge. ‘What you said about Irina Vostek – Sister Agnes – being weaker than she looks. What did you mean by that?’

He picked at his tooth, clearly wondering whether to tell me. ‘Her wrist,’ he said eventually. ‘She has a sprain that won’t heal. It swells up like a spud and I have to drain and bandage it after every fight. Tender as a flower and no use in the ring at all. But she’s clever, see; favours her other hand and kicks hard and quick, finishing her opponents before they work it out.’ He held up his sleeve. ‘She can no more clap than I can.’

I watched him go, weaving nimbly through the early evening crowds, while my mind fumbled with this new information.

If Sister Agnes only had one strong hand, how did she hang a man from a rope?

Following the arrest of Sister Agnes Munro, fresh evidence has emerged concerning the affairs of Mr Oswald Drake, which casts his murder into a new light. Far from being a man of fine qualities, as some have insisted, Mr Drake was significantly indebted. Since his death, his penniless widow has been evicted from her home at eighteen years of age, with their infant son in her arms. It seems likely that, prior to their marriage, she was one of many poor girls he allowed to sleep in his property, for reasons I am sure our astute readers can surmise.

On Thursday, Mr Frederick Lampton, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Chippenham, gave a speech in Westminster condemning Sister Agnes Munro in the strongest terms, garnering strong support from onlookers, estimated at over two hundred men and women. What are we to make of this new

‘Leo?’

I looked up from my typewriter at Harry, his face too close for comfort. His lips were moving as he read over my shoulder.

‘Your first sentence is quite wrong,’ he declared. ‘To start with, you’ve called her by her name and title, which is far too dull. No one’s afraid of a nun. Call her the Butcher of Berner Street. And “arrest” is too civilised as well. Following the capture of the Butcher of Berner Street, new evidence has … no, not “emerged”, it sounds like something washed up at low tide. Our reporter has discovered, no, uncovered new evidence – you see how much better that is? – that Mr Oswald Drake was not as saintly as some, such as Mr Frederick Lampton, Conservative Member of Parliament for Chippenham, et cetera, et cetera.’ He nodded, agreeing with his own corrections. ‘You have to grab their interest right away, you see? Force them to read on.’

I folded my arms. ‘I’m starting to think she might be innocent.’

‘So? It’s not up to us to decide who’s guilty and who isn’t. Our part is to inform the public of the facts. Except the public has the attention span of a kitten, so we dress it up a bit. Better they read something rather than nothing, wouldn’t you say?’

I shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

The gap between dressing it up a bit and outright lying was narrow indeed. Harry didn’t share my concerns.

‘Of course it is.’ He clicked his fingers, dismissing the entire question in a single gesture. ‘Where did you run off to yesterday, anyway?’

‘I wanted to talk to the widow.’

‘And leave me to write up Lampton’s boring speech? Very clever. I suppose you’ll get the top story again and my piece will have to go underneath. I’m just your opening act these days.’ He smoothed his hair over his ears theatrically and spoke to an imaginary person to his left. ‘Yes, I used to work with Sir Leo Stanhope long before he became wealthy and famous. Back then he was a humble science reporter who couldn’t write a decent first paragraph and never finished his book reviews. Now, only interviews with Prime Ministers and Princes are worthy of his time.’

‘I have to finish this.’

I started typing again, hammering on the keys as loudly as I could.

He grinned and continued his pretend interview, this time at greater volume. ‘In those days, Mr Stanhope had a sense of humour, sadly now drained away to nothing. I remember one occasion when he replaced the cheese in a bread roll belonging to the then Assistant Editor, Mr Terence Aubyn, with a large dollop of potted herring, causing the aforementioned Mr Aubyn to come out in an allergic rash.’

‘That was you, Harry.’

‘You were my accomplice. In fact, it was you who supplied the noxious substance.’

Mr Aubyn had been self-important and choleric, and he deserved a little pricking. We had conspired together in whispers before executing our plan to perfection. I didn’t feel guilty. Just for that afternoon, I was one of those rascal boys, getting up to ruses and dodging the blame, just like Harry, who possessed an impish capacity for coaxing other people into mischief.

I wondered what would Rosie do when the full power of his charm was turned upon her?

He sat forward, becoming serious. ‘What’s wrong, Leo? You look like you’ve lost a bet. Are you worried about Sister Butcher?’

‘I am. There’s more to this murder than meets the eye. I believe Drake beat his wife and molested the girls who slept in the gaff. Frankly, I’m beginning to think he deserved what he got.’

I finished the article and submitted it. The subeditor, Horace, read the whole thing in front of me, grumbling about junior reporters who lacked the sense to pick a nickname for a murderer and stick with it. Afterwards, I went to the privy and changed my sanitary cloth, folding the old one and dropping it into the waxed paper bag I’d brought with me.

At five o’clock, I dashed out of the door before anyone could argue.

The walk was brisk in the early summer rain. I lifted my jacket over my head and stepped over the puddles, trying to avoid the washes of muddy water cast at knee height by passing carriage wheels. My shoes were leaking worse than ever, and I was squelching loudly by the time I reached Jacob’s house, ironically on Shoe Lane.

There was a time when we spent every Thursday evening at our chess club; thirty or forty men hunched in smoke so thick so you could scarcely find your way back to your board from the bar. We used to drink ale and whisky, play chess and laugh so hard we couldn’t draw air back into our lungs. I still enjoyed his company, but our contests lacked variety these days. Even the finest steak can become tedious if it’s all one has to eat, and Jacob’s game was not the finest steak.

Again, it was young Eddie who opened the door. He greeted me politely, enquiring after my health and replying, when asked, that he too was quite well despite the damp weather. I fervently wished that he hadn’t chosen to construct this carapace of adulthood around himself at twelve years of age. I would rather he had raged and screamed at God and the world for taking his little brother from him.

Lilya and Millicent were cutting dough into rolls, a regular delight since they’d acquired their own oven, an iron beast crouching in the corner blasting heat and smoke into the room. Not being one to remove my jacket in company, I had no choice but to suffer and sweat.

‘Leo!’ exclaimed Lilya, holding my shoulders in her floury hands.

‘How are you?’

She gave me a bleak smile, her irises flicking from side to side behind the mist. ‘I continue. That is all. Today, tomorrow. Afterwards, who knows?’

She sometimes claimed that she could still see things: long-dead faces, faraway houses and a donkey she’d once ridden, as whole and real as when she was a girl. She once asked me if I thought these visions could have been sent by the angels because she was blind. Perhaps everyone received them, she suggested, these gifts from heaven, but the light shone too brightly in most people’s eyes for them to see. I replied that it might be so, but I was lying. They were nothing more than hallucinations created by her brain to make sense of her newly blank world. But they comforted her. Who was I to take that away?

‘You will have dinner with us, Leo, yes? Perhaps persuade that old fool, my husband, who is a blessing every day, to raise his lazy backside from his bed and eat at the table. He has two children here who miss him.’

Millicent and Eddie exchanged a look that I chose not to interpret.

‘Of course. I’ll see what I can do.’

Lilya slammed her ball of dough down on to the board. ‘He sleeps and I make bread. Every day the same. I throw away half the bread because he will not eat it. He will not eat anything. He will not repair jewellery. He will not go out.’ She pinched her nose and spoke in an adenoidal drone. ‘He will not wash himself. He is disgusting.’

I was not overbrimming with optimism. Jacob was as stubborn as an ulcer.

He was lying on the coverlet facing the door.

‘Ah!’ His voice was dry and thin. ‘Is it Thursday already?’

I nodded, thinking that Lilya had been right; the room needed airing and everything in it needed boiling, including Jacob. It wasn’t the chamber pot – I assumed Millicent took care of that – it was the stench of indolent humanity that filled my nostrils; bedclothes saturated with sweat, and underclothes stained grey and, in places, yellow, hanging off his bones like a half-shed snakeskin.

‘Lilya wants you to come down for dinner.’

He flicked his hand impatiently. ‘She thinks it’s important for me to do these things. Breakfast and dinner and work. She thinks it will solve everything. It will not.’ He sat up, wiggling his bare toes, scratching his overlong nails across the floorboard. ‘Will you be white or black?’ He didn’t wait for a reply but pulled the table towards him and started setting out the pieces, making himself white. ‘Now, tell me, what do they have you working on? The usual dull stuff, or has Charles Darwin discovered something new? Are we all descended from frogs now?’

‘No, nothing new from Darwin. Neither will there be. He’s dead.’

By my reckoning this was the fourth time I’d told Jacob this news, and yet he seemed no less surprised each time.

‘Oh! Well, that is unfortunate. Such an intelligent man.’

He moved his queen’s pawn two squares forward in a standard opening. It had been some time since we’d actually finished a game and I held little hope that this one would be any different, but still I matched him with my own pawn. Perhaps, I thought, I should play deliberately badly. He might find some pleasure in remembering that our contests could be won or lost.

‘For Lilya’s sake,’ I reminded him gently, ‘you could make more effort.’

‘And you’re the person to advise me of this, are you? You will instruct me what I should do for her sake, for your sake, for everyone’s sake. All except mine. My sake does not count. This much we know already.’

It was an old argument, oft repeated but never concluded.

‘I’ve apologised already, Jacob. You blame me for not coming more often when Albie died, and you’re right. I was still recovering, but …’ I put a hand to my cheek. It was hard and unfeeling, glazed by the flames. ‘I know I was selfish. I regret it very much now.’

He moved his king’s knight and I matched him. He quickly moved his queen’s pawn two spaces forward and scratched his head, cascading dry skin on to the board.

‘A little understanding is all I want. You spend your time worrying about …’ he swept a finger up and down. ‘About what you are, who you are, whether you have this part or that part. Believe me, when you’re old it ceases to matter. Everything shrinks and sags. Do you think Lilya is the same as she once was, with bosoms like puppydogs straining at the leash? Goodness, she was magnificent. Now, you can hardly tell the difference between us unclothed.’

‘She’s still beautiful,’ I said. ‘And it’s much to her advantage that she no longer has eyes to see what you look like.’

‘Hm, perhaps. Fortunate for us both.’ He licked his lips. ‘What I’m saying, Leo, is that you think too much about yourself. All the time, like an obsession. What you lack, rather than what you have. I would have thought … no, let us just play. Whose move is it?’

I felt a coldness creeping across my skin. I was well used to Jacob’s critiques – my impulsiveness, my diffidence, my choice of profession – but this felt different. He seemed to be angry. Rather to my own surprise, I realised I would give a great deal to regain his high opinion of me.

‘What were you going to say?’

‘You’re like my own child. You know this.’

‘Yes. I’m always honoured.’

He held up one finger. ‘My child, but not my son, hmm? Not anyone’s son.’ He met my eyes, peering under the bushes of his eyebrows. ‘Don’t look at me that way. It’s still a woman’s blood that flows in your veins, and I would’ve thought …’ he ran his hand across his hair. ‘You know. I would’ve thought you’d possess a woman’s consideration. A little gentleness, to take care of an old friend. Instead, you seem determined to prove yourself as tough and heartless as any man.’

‘Jacob …’

I stood up, unsure what I was intending to do next. Had anyone else spoken to me in that way, I would’ve walked out and probably never come back. But Jacob was Jacob. After I’d been burned, before Albie became ill, he visited me every second day with fruit tarts and cakes, cutting them into tiny pieces when my throat was too raw to swallow anything larger. He fetched my ointment, fixed the bandages on my hand and even gave me a new bowler hat to replace the one that was lost, with a high crown and narrow brim just like the old one. He’d shown far more consideration than I ever had.

He looked out of the window, his chin beginning to wobble.

‘You know I don’t care what you are, what you wear. I don’t ask why or when. Leave if you must. I don’t need you. None of this is your business.’

‘Of course, it’s my business. You’re like a father to me, far more so than my real father ever was. You can’t drive me away just because you’re stricken by grief.’

He gave a petulant shrug. ‘It would be better if you went. I have things to do.’

He cast a swift, guilty look at the drawer in his little table, where the box of chess men was kept when they weren’t being used. I followed his eyes, and he reddened. I shot out a hand for the drawer and he tried to stop me, but I was quicker and stronger. I pulled it open, and inside was a cigar box.

‘What’s in this, Jacob?’

But he wouldn’t reply.

I emptied the contents on to the chess board: a brass hypodermic syringe and a paper bag half full of white crystals. I put a few grains on my finger and tasted them. They were as sour as lemon rind.

‘This is morphine,’ I said.

He closed his eyes. ‘Perhaps it is. I forget.’

I glared at him, infuriated. I had declined all morphine and chloral when I was recovering from my burns, not wanting to sink again into that black water. I could well remember how it was; phantasms of men with wolves’ heads and a ghastly humming I couldn’t abide. I would rather remain conscious and suffer the agony. And now here was Jacob, using the stuff to escape into nightmares of his own, avoiding the truth that his precious boy was dead and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

But in truth, what would I do, I wondered, if Aiden or Ciara or Constance were taken from me that way, by a sickness that lasted a mere four days from the first cough to the last breath? I would be the first to reach for a syringe. Damn it, I would be standing on Westminster Bridge where my name waited for me still, scratched into the paintwork under the handrail. I could almost hear the roar of the river and feel the wind against my face, the sudden rush and the slam of water shutting out the sky.

I sat down.

‘Please, Jacob, let’s just play chess like we used to. I miss those days. It’s your move.’

When I got home, much later that evening, I emptied my pockets on to my bed: a cigar case containing a syringe and a bag of morphine.

For a few seconds, I felt overwhelmed by temptation. I almost did it. My hand was on the bag and my mind was calculating exactly where in the pharmacy Alfie kept his pure alcohol. How sweetly the crystals would dissolve and how easily I could slide that liquid into my veins.

I turned back before I reached my bedroom door.

If I injected myself with morphine, I would be lost. There would be no coming back a second time.

I lay down, listing all the names I’d taken for myself, trying not to think about how it would feel, not to feel.

I started at the beginning this time. The first name always made me shudder; Tom Cobb, that desperate lad. Next, I was Thomas Manly and almost went to debtors’ prison, saved by my sister, Jane. Then George Harding, Maurice Jackson and Maurice Stanhope, a surname borrowed from the London street. I liked that it included the word ‘hope’. And then one day I went to the menagerie on the Strand and saw a toothless lion with drool in its mane and fur like an old curtain. But you could see how he might have been in his prime: a taut mass of muscle and death. The sign called him: Panthera Leo, and that was that.

I had become distracted.

Something was nagging at me, but I couldn’t focus. Some connection I ought to make.

I looked at the syringe and it came to me. Sister Agnes had kept one much like this hidden in her prayer room. What if it was for the same purpose?

Raptures was the word she’d used, for those moments of oneness with God.

But what if those moments weren’t so much spiritual as chemical?

What if the reason Sister Agnes kept a syringe wasn’t to poison Oswald Drake, but to inject herself ?