Twenty

‘She gives her name as Mrs Jane Arrowsmith,’ my brother said. ‘Her age as three-and-thirty, her address as Bates Buildings off Cursitor Street.’

It was the morning after Mrs Hardy’s visit, and Fred (before I’d had a chance to tell him anything about it) had summoned me to a police station in the depths of the city near the Monument, where he exhibited Mrs Arrowsmith with the glee of a fairground showman.

‘She was locked up last night on a charge of Drunk and Bloodthirsty, having allegedly caused an affray at the Goat in Boots, during which she assaulted the landlady.’

‘I weren’t drunk, sir,’ said Mrs Arrowsmith, in a low voice.

She sat in the middle of the bare, cold, brick-lined room, looking anything but bloodthirsty; poor creature, it was impossible not to feel sorry for her. She was faded and shabby, lined and grey before her time, and carried with her that poignant air of having once known something better. Hope had died in her. She had a fine bruise over one cheekbone (her hand fluttered painfully over it) and her sparse hair was all torn down at one side. Once, I thought, she would have been astonished to see herself in this fallen state.

‘You were certainly bloodthirsty,’ Fred said, smiling. ‘They told me it took two policemen to drag you off her.’

‘All I want is my husband, sir – she knows where he is, and she won’t tell me!’ An exhausted tear slid down her cheek.

‘Arrowsmith’ was one of the names used by Savile; now I understood Fred’s totally unsuitable air of jollity. He could be dreadfully thoughtless sometimes. I raised my eyebrows at him meaningfully, and he had the grace to look a little ashamed.

‘I’m afraid you’d better believe me, Jane,’ he said, in a softer voice. ‘The man you described to me sounds awfully like the dead man who called himself Savile.’

‘My husband’s name is John Arrowsmith.’ She was breathing hard, as if trying to fight off the truth. ‘We’ve been married seven years. Anyone can tell you.’

‘Where would I find a record of your marriage?’

‘It weren’t in a church,’ Mrs Arrowsmith said. ‘But we lived together and everybody in our buildings knows us as man and wife.’

‘She last saw him the day after the last of Savile’s letters to the Frenchwoman,’ Fred said, over her tattered head. ‘Unsurprisingly, she hasn’t heard anything since.’

‘Why did you think he was at the Goat in Boots?’ I asked.

‘Because that’s where he went to meet this man that he called the Prince.’

No wonder Fred was smiling. Here, at last, was proof of the link between Savile and his killer.

‘Did you ever see the Prince?’ I tried not to sound too eager.

‘No. But my husband said he knew him. I didn’t ask where from.’ She hung her head, tired out with repeating her story. ‘When he said it like that, he usually meant it was someone he met in prison. He was locked up for robbery with violence – but it was only the drink made him like that.’

‘He once lived on the Continent,’ I said. ‘Could the Prince have been someone he knew from that time?’

Mrs Arrowsmith was confused. ‘I dunno – he only talked about it when he was in his cups. And he talked French sometimes, on account of he used to be quite a gentleman.’ (It was touching to hear the remnants of pride in her voice as she told us this.) ‘The Prince gave him a job to do – he didn’t say what job, but Arrowsmith swore blind there was money in it.’

‘Did you see any of it?’ Fred asked.

‘No, sir; Arrowsmith said it was coming, that’s all.’ A single sob shook her. ‘I can’t believe he was murdered and I didn’t even know it!’ At last, the news was sinking in. ‘Oh, what shall I do?’

‘Did you ever hear the Prince’s true name?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did your husband ever let slip any little thing about the Prince’s background?’

‘No, sir. The only thing he said was one night when he was brought home drunk, and he kept going on about how he was going to give the Prince a taste of his own medicine.’

‘Had they argued?’

‘I dunno, sir,’ Mrs Arrowsmith said. ‘He shouts his head off sometimes, and all I care about is keeping him quiet because of the neighbours.’

‘Do you remember anything he said?’ I asked.

‘Something from the Bible – the dead will rise again. But it was only the drink talking, sir – he was such a good man at heart!’

It was plain to me, if not to my brother, that this woman had deeply loved the man she called her ‘husband’, and I did my utmost to sound kindly – which was difficult when I had been given a high chair behind the duty sergeant’s desk, and felt I was looming over her like an ogress. ‘Can you remember the last time you saw your husband?’

‘It was just like any ordinary morning,’ Mrs Arrowsmith said. ‘That is, except for him getting out of bed before noon. I know I’d only just sat down to my work when he left – I take in bits of sewing when I can.’ She wiped her face with her shawl. ‘He gave me a kiss and took what money I had – well, just like any other day.’

‘When were you expecting him to come home?’

She raised her head, to fix me with her stubborn, hopeless eyes. ‘He took off sometimes, for days on end. But he was always back home inside a week – even if it was only to get money. This time, when he’d been gone for more than a fortnight, I went out a-searching for him.’

(I am often astounded by what a woman will endure from a man; for two pins I would have told Mrs Arrowsmith she was a great deal better off without her ‘husband’, but didn’t have the heart when she was only just getting acquainted with the fact of his death; the tears rained down her frozen face, and I couldn’t help recalling my own state when I lost my beloved Matt.)

‘Where did you look for him?’ I asked.

‘The places he went when he wasn’t with me.’

‘What places?’

‘The inns where he worked sometimes, in the stables and suchlike. When I didn’t find him, I knew he must’ve gone to the Goat in Boots and the Prince. Mrs Dooley said the Prince had gone and she’d never seen my husband. She kept on turning me away – I went back again and again. I was sure she was lying to me.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘I thought she was covering up for him because he had another woman.’ Mrs Arrowsmith touched her swollen, wounded cheek delicately, wincing with the pain. ‘It wouldn’t have been the first time. But he always came home to me, or he sent word – for clothes and money, and suchlike. I was his wife, you see.’

‘I’m afraid you’re not the only woman to claim that honour,’ Fred said briskly.

‘Yes, sir – but I’m the wife he lived with.’

There was a certain dignity in the way she insisted upon this (‘I am Duchess of Malfi still!’) that could not fail to move me.

‘Constable,’ I said to the policeman inside the door, ‘Mrs Arrowsmith is shivering; would it be possible to move her chair closer to the fire?’

There was a very small fire in the grate, nothing on such a bitter day. Mrs Arrowsmith and her chair were placed in front of it; she held out her hands to it like a sleepwalker.

‘Did you suspect any woman in particular of harbouring your “husband”?’ Fred asked.

‘Sarah Gammon. He let her cook for him sometimes.’

‘Gammon! Another of Savile’s names,’ Fred said. ‘This job your “husband” was doing for the Prince – let’s assume it was blackmail. Did the Prince know something juicy about somebody important?’

‘No, sir – not exactly,’ Mrs Arrowsmith said. ‘At least, he thought he did, but Arrowsmith said the joke would be on him – he reckoned he knew something about the Prince that was going to set him up for life.’

That last word hung on the air with awful irony; the poor woman remembered that he was dead, and dissolved into a flood of tears.

Fred paid Mrs Arrowsmith’s fine of fifteen shillings, and we both watched her bent, ragged figure vanishing into the crowds that jostled on the narrow city pavements.

‘Don’t feel too bad, Letty.’ He gave me a friendly clap on the back. ‘I talked them out of locking her up any longer. And she can keep her own money for herself now.’

My brother was in a very good mood today – despite the biting winter weather, and the lamentable lack of progress in our case.

(The fact is that Fred was born in a good mood; I well recall the enchanted morning when I had just turned three and Papa woke me up with the astounding news that a baby brother had appeared overnight; I still swear that this small, lusty, scarlet personage grinned at me when we met, and I adored him at once; according to Mamma, I grabbed his little hand and shouted, ‘Mine!’)

Today, when I needed to tell him about Mrs Hardy, he kept brushing me off. ‘Yes, yes – I can’t listen properly until my feet are warm. At the moment, I wish to get as far as possible from any sort of penal institution. We’re off to Newgate this afternoon, and I always like to fortify myself beforehand. I can go no further without beefsteak.’

‘Fred, what has got into you?’

‘I’m not telling you until lunch has got into me.’

Matt always said the only people who knew more about bodily comfort than clergymen were lawyers. Fred whisked me off to a delightful old private dining room, on the first floor of a bustling chop-house in Fleet Street, a traditional haunt of the legal profession. There was a blazing fire, and a round table spread with a crisp white cloth. Fred ordered glasses of hot negus, and the establishment’s celebrated beefsteak pie.

The negus was strong and spicy, and spread delicious warmth to the ends of my toes. I held my frozen hands over the fire, and thought sadly of Mrs Arrowsmith, shivering in her thin shawl. At times like this, I am ashamed that I ever considered myself poor; how rich was my life compared with hers. I wondered where she was at this moment.

‘Knock it off,’ Fred said, lounging royally in his chair. ‘There was nothing more you could’ve done for the woman. Don’t you ever take a holiday from the sorrows of the world?’

‘I can’t help it; I see sorrow wherever I look.’

‘My dearest sister, the first thing I learnt as a lawyer was that no murder is big enough to stand in the way of a good luncheon.’

‘Fred – really!’ (I was laughing in spite of myself; this was exactly the sort of thing he did with juries.) ‘I don’t know how you can shake it off so easily. What’s put you in such a jolly mood?’

‘It’s the result of a conversation I had yesterday with Filey,’ Fred said, ladling more hot negus into his glass. ‘I confronted him with a snippet of rumour that I picked up in the city. He knew the jig was up, and spilled a bean or two about the Calderstone estate. Would that be along the lines of what was imparted to you by Mrs Hardy?’

‘Yes.’ I was a little crestfallen that he knew. ‘I thought you’d be anxious about your fees.’

‘Anxious?’ He let out a rich, satisfied chuckle. ‘Quite the reverse. I took the information I had from Filey, and dropped it into the ear of a friend of mine who works at the Stock Exchange. And a nice bundle of cash he made of it.’

‘But surely Mr Filey told you in confidence! Doesn’t this count as an abuse of privilege?’

‘No,’ Fred said shortly. ‘You said yourself, when Sir James folds I’ll have to whistle for my fees. I simply decided to help myself – perfectly legally, I hasten to add. A case of “forewarned is forearmed”.’

‘Even if it wasn’t against the law, it was very unprincipled of you; think what Papa would’ve said.’

‘Papa would have given me his sermon about keeping the letter of the law while breaking the spirit. God bless him and rest his soul – but I have ten children and another on the way, and my unprincipled behaviour has paid a lot of bills.’

‘But Fred – don’t you dare make your wise-monkey face at me! Oh, what’s the point? I know you won’t listen.’

‘I’ll be able to move the mob down to the seaside for a couple of months this summer,’ Fred said happily. ‘Which will be pleasant for Fanny and the new nipper. You should come down for a few days, old girl – put the roses back in your cheeks.’

‘Stop it – you know my cheeks have never had any roses. You’re a disgrace.’

But I knew he would refuse to listen until his ample stomach was full. Two immaculate waiters arrived with our luncheon, and the rich scent of the beefsteak pie made it impossible to think about anything else. I am but flesh, after all; the sorrows of the world were left to take care of themselves for a few minutes, while I lost myself in the base pleasure of eating.

Afterwards, when the cloth had been drawn and my brother reclined luxuriously beside the fire with a glass of port, I began again.

‘What did you make of Mrs Arrowsmith?’

‘Not much,’ Fred said. ‘As far as the case goes, she’s another dead end; I was hoping she could tell us a little something more about the famous “Prince”; I’m sick of hearing about this mysterious character when I can’t get my hands on him! But His Highness plainly doesn’t want to be found.’

‘I’d like to talk to Mrs Dooley,’ I said. ‘We only have her word that he left the Goat in Boots. He’s the murderer, Fred – we must find him before Charles Calderstone goes to trial!’

‘Yes, he’s our man,’ Fred replied. ‘And yes, we must catch him as soon as maybe.’ He leaned towards me across the fire, suddenly very serious. ‘But it’s no job for you, my dear old thing; I want you to give me your solemn promise that you’ll stay as far away from him as possible.’