14

“You’ve got nothing?”

“Nuffin’ worth a spit.”

“Very pleasant, I’m sure,” Kell said. “But it won’t do. Report, military style—we are military intelligence, after all.”

Wiggins arched his eyebrow. “Bethell at the Admiralty. I think he’s clean but it’s hard to confirm it. His habits are regular, from what I can see he don’t have any hobbies that would put him in the red, and he ain’t got any German connections. Clean as an RSM’s backside, in other words.”

“Must everything be obscene?”

Wiggins relented. “I can’t watch ’em all on my tod, all of the time. And I can’t say what they’s get up to behind closed doors. None of their gaffs would let in the likes of me.”

Kell looked at him. It was true. Wiggins wouldn’t get past the door of any club in Pall Mall. “No,” he said.

“I didn’t say nuffin’.”

“But you thought it. I will not let you burgle these people’s houses.”

“I wouldn’t take anything.”

“What if they’re innocent? We would have been breaking and entering the most powerful households in the land. We would go to prison.”

Wiggins shrugged. Kell glanced down at the list in front of him. “Twelve names. It must be one of these twelve men. And you’re saying we can’t eliminate any of them?”

“Not yet.”

Kell threw his hands up in exasperation. He thought of Constance and their horrible argument of the night before. He would never forgive himself for grabbing her arm. She hadn’t come back in the morning—or else she’d slept in the guest room and got up early—and he wondered for a moment if she ever would. What he really needed to do was put Wiggins on her, see where that ball of thread unraveled to, but that was part of the problem—and it was the reason for his agitation, he realized now, his aggression.

He’d come back home late in the evening, directly from a meeting with Churchill, who had summoned him angrily on the telephone.

“Why do you not return my messages?” he’d demanded as soon as Kell came through the door of his office.

“The Service, sir, is stretched. We are under—”

“—resourced. It is all we ever hear. You do realize I am the only thing keeping you afloat. Whenever it comes up, the rest of the Cabinet is all for folding you into Special Branch. Is your heart not in it, man?”

Kell stood in the doorway still, unable even to take a seat. Churchill glowered through a plume of swirling smoke. “My heart’s in it, sir,” Kell said through gritted teeth.

“Capital. Now, I’ll have whisky.” He jabbed his cigar at the drinks cabinet, and rounded his desk to sit down. “I read your man’s report on the situation in Wales—can’t say I wholeheartedly agree with him. You are sure he is reliable?”

“Agent W is the best man I have.”

“He’s the only man, isn’t he?” Churchill snapped. “Never mind. You’ll have heard, I’m sure, about the growing unrest in Nottingham? The shipbuilders in Belfast. The boilermakers. And the dockers—the dockers everywhere are revolting.”

Kell nodded as Churchill lectured on. Industrial problems were breaking out all over the country. Whisper it quietly—as Soapy sometimes did—but one of the reasons for the mooted general election was to distract people from their current concerns. If people thought that an election was coming, that an election might usher in change, then they might leave off. Of course, this wasn’t even mentioned as a reason in the press. To them, the election might be necessary to stop the Liberals’ reliance on the Irish in the coalition and ultimately to overcome the Lords on the question of the budget.

Kell listened to this political lesson from Churchill in silence.

“Kell?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I said, send him in. Agent W.”

“Where?”

“The docks this time. We have no reliable informants inside the unions—at least, Special Branch don’t in London—and I need to know who the ringleaders are, why they are striking, and what they plan to do.”

“But surely . . .” Kell hesitated. He could almost hear Wiggins’s reply in the room. They’s striking cos their job’s shit and they’re paid shit.

A sharp rap at the door saved Kell from actually uttering this thought. “Enter,” Churchill cried. He grinned crookedly and Kell turned to see Sir Patrick Quinn, head of Special Branch.

“Quinn,” Churchill said. “Good of you to join us. You know Captain Kell, of course.”

“That I do, sir, that I do.” Quinn looked down his long nose and nodded, infuriating as ever.

“Good day,” Kell said. It was a nasty shock to see him, but judging from the look on Quinn’s face, he’d had no idea about the meeting either.

“I wonder, Quinn, if you could update us on the unrest out at West India Docks?”

For once discomfited, Quinn glanced at Kell, then back at Churchill. “It’s the usual stuff,” he said at last. “Mild discontent, whipped up by a few troublemakers. Nothing serious.”

“Which troublemakers?”

“I am wondering, if I may, sir,” Quinn said slowly, recovering from the initial surprise, “what such information has to do with the Secret Service Bureau?”

Churchill exhaled. “Well, wonder on, till truth makes all things plain.”

“Just so,” Quinn nodded. “We haven’t yet identified the exact identity of the troublemakers, sir, but we will do, we will do.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t have much confidence in your record so far,” Churchill said, taking a gulp of his drink.

Quinn hesitated and then, to Kell’s surprise (and grudging respect), answered back. “We only have so many bodies, sir, and there’s much trouble being made just now, so there is.” He paused, looked over at Kell, then went on. “There’s a deal of prioritizing going on, sir, if I may say. The suffragettes, for example, they are getting ever more militant. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a death at their hands soon.”

As he spoke this last sentence, Quinn looked hard at Kell. Kell felt in his pocket for a smoke and glanced up at Churchill, only to see that the home secretary was also looking hard at him. “Indeed,” Churchill said at last. “Thank you, Captain Kell, that will be all.”

Kell held the cigarette to his mouth unlit, nodded, and got up. “Sir,” he said. It took all his resolve to keep his walk steady, to pull open the door without shaking, and to walk away without trying to listen in. Churchill had engineered Quinn’s appearance at the meeting, that was for certain. He was playing them off against each other, clearly, but to what end? Almost overnight, Kell had found himself in the middle of some political game that he didn’t understand.

One thing he did understand, though, was that both Quinn and Churchill knew more about his wife’s activities than he did.

“Sir!”

Kell snapped out of his reverie and looked up across his desk at Wiggins. “What was that?”

Wiggins snapped his fingers. “Who should I tap up next? I ain’t hit anyone from the FO since Carter.”

“I need you down at West India Docks first,” Kell said, his mind still on Churchill. “There’s growing unrest and we have no idea who’s instigating it, or why.”

“Not hard to guess why. You ever worked a shift on the dock? It’d break your back. And your wrists. And your fingers.”

“Yes, thank you for the poetry. I need you to go down there. Blend in. Find out who the troublemakers are—not the official union leaders, the real ringleaders. Get what you can on them. Their names, where they live, who they associate with, you know the drill.”

“They’s all German spies, are they?” Wiggins sneered. “We gonna find Van Bork hauling bananas off the quay?”

Kell paused. “You will find out what I tell you to find out. Or it’s over.”

Back at his digs, Wiggins dodged the side door and went into the pub proper for a drink. The ten pounds Cumming had paid him wasn’t going to last forever, especially since he’d started paying Jax to scout out the East End, but there was always change for a livener. Even the down-and-outs knew that.

She sat alone, facing away from the door, but Wiggins recognized her immediately. Shoulders square, back so straight it didn’t even touch the chair. She didn’t flinch when he came in, nor when he ordered his drink, not even when he walked over toward her and stood for a moment. But he knew she waited for him.

“You’re a sharp ’un,” he said as he slid into the seat opposite.

Martha blinked. “Never underestimate a whore.”

“You said that with pride.”

“I am proud. Look at me. My mother was born on a slaver, my daddy worked the fields—rice fields too, and if you don’t know how hard that is, then you’re a lucky man—and yet here I am, promenading the streets of Belgravia, drinking sherry wine and keeping a most attractive gentleman’s rapt attention.”

“Sorry about that.” Wiggins blushed and looked away. It was the way she held herself, or her dress or he didn’t know what, but it was hard not to look.

She laughed, sweet and light, not the deep, throaty laugh he expected. “Big T’s not so bad,” she said after a moment. “What did you do to him?”

“What did I do to ’im?” He drained the last of his pint, shook his head, then called out to the barman, “’Ere, Ralph. Another half-and-half and . . . ?” He looked at Martha. “Sherry, large.”

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she looked him over with a faintly amused air, unashamed, undaunted by his stare. Wiggins shifted his eyes down to her chest, then quickly away. Her dress was made from a fine purple material, with embroidered flowers around the collar and frills on the hem. She wore long lace gloves, with a red ribbon poking out from one cuff. He guessed she was the same age as him, but somehow she seemed younger and yet older at the same time. Her skin shone like a youth’s, but the way her eyes sparkled, the way her mouth turned up at the ends, told Wiggins that she knew more than him about a lot. Most importantly, she’d found him. Did that mean Tommy had found him too?

The barman slapped down the drinks. Wiggins pulled long at his pint, then looked at Martha once more. “We knew each other once, as little ’uns. Street kids. But Tommy never cottoned to me. Or my boss, anyways.”

“You always do what the boss says?”

“No,” Wiggins rapped back. “I just . . . Me and Tommy, chalk and cheese.”

She sipped her sherry.

“He send you?” he said.

Martha looked surprise. “He’s not my master.”

“Does he know?”

She drummed her gloved hands on the table in a rare show of impatience. “I didn’t take you for a dummy,” she said.

The double doors crashed open and knot of transport workers came in—a driver and a couple of conductors, Wiggins saw from a glance. He took another swig and ran his hand through his hair.

Martha twirled the glass by its stem. “What do people do for amusement round these parts?”

He looked up, surprised. “Other than head to your gaff?”

“You don’t approve of prostitution?”

“It’s not that, it’s . . . I don’t know.” He clammed up. He didn’t know quite what to say to Martha, or what she even meant half the time.

“It’s an escape for some people. All they want is an escape. You ever want that?”

He shrugged. “I’m London, me.”

“So you can tell me. What do courting couples in London do?”

“Ya want me to say?”

“In public. Where do they go out?”

“Ain’t my scene,” Wiggins said. “The boozer?” He swilled the beer in his glass, and looked down. She arched her back, slow and languid, then sighed.

“Not used to this, are you?”

He shook his head, unsure. She smiled suddenly, bunching up her cheeks. “What do you do, then?”

“What do I do?”

“For money. You have the advantage on me—you know what I do, don’t you?”

He felt the heat in his cheeks once more, and flicked his eyes to the window. She laughed lightly. For some reason, everything she said embarrassed him. He’d known streetwalkers his whole life, running around Soho and Marylebone. They’d call out to him as he ran past, their jokes getting bluer as he got older. It was all good-natured, and he looked on them like aunties rather than whores. But when Martha opened her mouth, he didn’t know what to say or where to look.

She put down her glass with a heavy clunk. “Poppy ain’t your fault,” she said.

Wiggins nodded. “What happened?”

“It happens all the time. It’s a hard life, ’specially at the start. Some of the young girls can’t see no other way.”

“And you can?”

She wiped a stray fleck from her lips. “Maybe. We’s all waiting for the shining white knight.”

Wiggins eyed his near-empty glass, glanced up at the bar, then back at Martha. But rather than offering her another, he said, “Have you told Tommy where I am?”

“What do you take me for?”

He looked at her. “Once of Sierra Leone, spent time down Haymarket in the old days. Eye trouble. Smoke with an ’older, but not often. Interest in needlepoint. And you’re a senior whore at the plushest knocking shop in London. That’s what I take you for. I need to know what you told Tommy.”

She shook her head. “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Wiggins.” She got up with the same grace and languor as all her movements, but her face was set.

“I didn’t mean . . .” Wiggins reached toward her helplessly as she gathered her bag from the floor.

“I know exactly what you mean,” she said into her shoulder. Then she walked across the bar, turning the head of each and every man as she did so, pushed out of the pub doors, and was gone.

“I’ve been rumbled.”

“Wot?” Jax said through a mouth stuffed with bacon sandwich.

“Tommy’s got the gen on me and all. Had to move out of the pub, sharpish. And don’t talk with your mouth full, you might drop some of it.” He took a bite of his own sandwich and began to chew carefully.

They sat at one end of Sal’s cabby hut during a lull in business, sharing an enormous bacon sandwich. “Ow!” Jax put her cup down hurriedly. “Ma,” she screamed. “This char is bloody scalding. Near ripped my lip off.”

“Chance would be a fine thing.” Sal ambled over and sat next to her, looking at Wiggins. “How’s my Holmes and Watson of the gutter getting on? Out of leads?”

“That place is dark, Sal, I’m telling you.”

“Leave it then.”

Wiggins shook his head slowly and glanced at Jax. Sal put her hands on the table and said, “All right. What would Mr. Holmes do? If he wanted round-the-clock gen on an whorehouse, the comings and goings and whatnot?”

“He’d ask us,” Wiggins said.

“Cos we could go everywhere, see everything, and not be seen.”

“Zackly.”

“Well,” Sal said with a smile.

“Well what?”

She gestured at the cab drivers’ paraphernalia littered around the cabin, the whip above the door, the lanterns hanging at each end of the long trestle table, and a stuffed tiger’s head in pride of place, winner of the weirdest left-item prize since forever. “I got the best network in London, ain’t I?”

Wiggins grinned. “Can’t send a cabby to an whorehouse,” he said. “They’d only start competing for a fare. Putting it on the meter.”

“You really have gone soft,” she said.

Jax scraped back her chair. “I’m going for a slash.”

“I’m so glad I shelled out for charm school,” Sal said.

“Can’t teach class.”

They watched her crash out of the back door of the hut. Sal held her eyes away from Wiggins for a moment. She pushed a ginger curl out of her face. “I’ll put the word out. It’ll take time, but I reckon we’ll get an addy for every sad sod that visits the place. In the end.”

“Could work. Better than sod all.”

“You’re not gonna get in there anytime soon, not if Tommy’s on the watch. And before you say anything, I ain’t having Jax sent in.”

“She’s busy on something else.”

“I noticed—you paying her proper?”

“I’m paying her. It’s safe, she’s just taking a look-see, keeping an ear to the old horseshit.”

Sal pursed her lips. Wiggins could still see the child she used to be, around the mouth and cheeks, and her bright sparklers. But her back was bent, the skin on her hands red raw, and she couldn’t shake her frown no more. “What’s wrong?” she said suddenly.

“Nothing. Just thinking about the old days.”

“Wot for? You miss living in the streets, do ya? Miss scrabbling around, dodging beatings, eating scraps, picking up fag ends on Baker Street?”

“I miss the old you,” he said. “You used to be all right.”

“Shut up.”

“I gotta get down the docks yesterday.”

She looked at him carefully. “You all right?”

Wiggins felt the wooden table under his hands, bent his fingers, realized they’d been drumming. “I got a lot on.” And then, while Sal still stared at him, “I’ve got to find the Painter. That’s what Jax is helping wiv, till my blunt runs out. And that’s dark stuff going on at the Embassy. Tommy tried to have me killed, sure as eggs.”

“The rozzers?”

Wiggins raised an eyebrow at that. “Yeah, right.”

Sal’s spoon tinkled in her teacup. “You don’t have to stay, you know.”

“Leave London?”

“You could find her?”

Wiggins shook his head. “No, no. That ship’s sailed. Any roads, I can’t leave. I’ve got a debt to pay. Two debts. Bill and the girl, Poppy. I won’t let Tommy get away with that. And I need a job—and time—to pay ’em off. Even if it takes me until nineteen bloody thirty, I’ll pay me debts.”

“Be a hero, what do I care?” Sal said.

“You owes me a tanner.” Jax burst back through the door and pointed at Wiggins. “Expenses. Bus fares.”

“You ain’t paid a fare in your life.” He flicked her the coin nevertheless.

She pulled a huge cap over her eyes. “See ya,” she said, and was gone.

They both looked after her. “No word of a lie, she’s your spit,” Wiggins said, almost to himself.

“You think so? She always reminds me of her dad.”

Wiggins gathered up his coat and hat and appeared not to hear.

“I’ll let you know how we get on with those addies. Pass the word. Free cup of cha for each. You might not get inside that bloody place, but you’ll know who else does.”

“That’s jam that is, Sal. Always the brains of the operation.”

“And yous was the face. Where you get those strides, by the way? You look like a docker on the skids.”

“Master of disguise, like the Great Old Detective.”

“You never did see the old man straight.”

Wiggins left then, and it wasn’t until later that he thought about Sal’s parting comment, and what it might mean.

Kell watched from his bedroom window as Constance strode purposefully toward Hampstead Underground station. He’d given up trying to follow her; she was too fly. Any thaw that the trip to Germany had effected between them had been shot to pieces by those blasted women in Holloway refusing to eat. He couldn’t see what was wrong with trying to feed them, even if they didn’t want to be fed. Were the authorities really to sit by and do nothing while women in their care died? What else could they do? Either way, the government’s response had led to a string of furious rows, and now Constance was barely speaking to him at all.

He looked out the window once more. A figure in a flat cap and baggy trousers stood at the corner around which his wife had just disappeared. He crouched down, his back to Kell, and peeked after her. Then he too went around the corner.

Kell rushed down the stairs and out into the hallway. He thought of the man he’d found following him outside the house months earlier. Kell had assumed at the time that the man was tailing him—indeed, had suspected that the man might be in the pay of the government mole. But was it in fact Constance, not he, who had the tail? Who would be following her? And why?

He stepped out of his front door, only to realize he didn’t have his shoes on. He hadn’t breakfasted either. And when he came to think of it, what would he do if he did catch up with the suspicious man? He hadn’t been able to follow his wife successfully, and he felt damn sure that she’d lose the man on the corner soon enough. He gave it up and went back inside.

“Cook!” he shouted. “I shall take a rack of toast, and a kipper. Make that two kippers.”

He padded barefoot into the breakfast room and tried to organize his thoughts about something other than his wife. Wiggins had turned up some useful information on the Cabinet, but as yet no smoking gun as far as the Committee meeting was concerned. None of the twelve men on the list had been definitively ruled in or out. His Foreign Office source, Moseby-Brown, had been supplying him with all sorts of Foreign Office gossip. A shifty chap beneath the sleek exterior, but he was prepared to give Kell an inside scoop.

There had been no breakthrough, though, and it was now October.

“Mrs. Kell has gone out already?” the cook said, bustling through the door with a tray.

“An excellent observation. Thank you, Cook.” He snapped open the newspaper.

Dr. Crippen was all over the front page. His trial had just begun. A man so sick of his wife, he’d poisoned her and then buried what was left of the body under his house before setting up home with another woman. Was the unfortunate Mrs. Crippen a suffragette? Kell wondered idly as he bit into a corner of lightly buttered toast.

“Let’s get nearer the front,” Nobbs said. “My cousin Clarrie is to speak.”

Constance followed the four women—Nobbs, Abernathy, Dinah, and Tansy—as they filed through a mass of demonstrators on the eastern edge of Hyde Park.

She thought of the King’s funeral, her first day out with these young women, when Wiggins had stepped in. But this time, it was all women. This time, no one would look askance at their banners; this time, they were getting somewhere, for all Abernathy’s grumbles.

“Keep up,” Dinah grinned. “We don’t want to lose you.”

They were the same words she’d used the month before when Constance had jumped into the cab at Oxford Circus with Dinah, Abernathy, and Nobbs.

Constance had run from the police. She’d thrown down the club in front of Boots, grabbed her skirts, and run. Run like she hadn’t done since she was seven, so that her heart hammered, her hat flew off, and her feet sang with pain. But she’d also felt the power surging in her legs, and by the time they got to the cab, idling at the corner of Great Marlborough Street, she’d almost caught up with Dinah.

“Go,” Abernathy yelled at the driver.

The gears ground as the cab leapt away from the curb toward Soho. “North,” Constance called, and Abernathy leaned toward the driver, knife in hand.

Five minutes later, Constance called again. “Out!”

“Now?” Abernathy said. “Why?”

The taxi screeched to a halt. Abernathy waited on the pavement as the others got out. The cabby drove off, mouthing obscenities out of the window.

Constance shepherded them round the corner of Euston Square and out by Euston Station, which was still abuzz with business. The trains had ceased for the night, but the milk train would be going soon, late-night buses stopped by, and the post was being hauled through the station. They could also see the odd cab scouting for early trade.

“Brilliant,” said Nobbs.

Abernathy nodded at Constance. “Good idea, Euston.”

“A triumph,” Dinah trilled.

The moment of triumph hadn’t lasted long, Constance reflected as she followed the girls to the front of the crowd, at least not for Abernathy. But she felt hopeful for the cause, despite the horrors of Holloway. A bill was to go before Parliament, offering limited voting rights for women. And once it started, she knew, it would not stop until they all got the vote. It felt closer, it felt real, and the thrill of being with these young women as they pushed it forward, whether it was acid-bombing postboxes or smashing windows, was something she’d been waiting for her whole life. It was real; it was progress.

They reached the front of the demonstration without too much difficulty. Purple, green, and white banners ruffled in the breeze and a gentle burble of conversation and laughter carried over the throng. Next to their little group stood a delegation from India, dressed in thick saris with furs slung over their shoulders against the October cold.

A row of speakers stood on a raised platform, taking turns to rally the crowd. “There’s Clarrie,” Nobbs called.

“My, that is a pretty sari,” Constance said to a tall, thin woman in Indian dress with a red dot on her forehead. She leaned forward and fingered the material. “Thank you for supporting us, in our struggle,” Constance said eventually. “Do you know Princess Sophia Duleep Singh?” The Indian woman looked at her oddly, but nodded and smiled.

“Constance,” Dinah hissed. “Over here. It’s Clarrie’s turn to speak.”

She smiled again at the Indian woman, who looked back, bemused. Up on the stage, Nobbs’s cousin Clarrie belted out her diatribe at a good volume. “The Conciliation Bill will go to Parliament next month. We have high hopes that enough MPs will see reason to grant this small, first step in getting women the vote. Consequently, we are formally announcing a cease in all hostilities until the bill gets to Parliament, as a sign of our good faith, and our reason.”

A big cheer went up, and some scattered clapping. After that, a small band readied themselves and the women on the podium held hands. “I still say Fairyland’s the place,” Tansy muttered. “I still say it.”

“We must certainly be ready,” Abernathy growled. “When they skewer the bill at Westminster. I second Tansy.”

“Second her about what?” Constance finally asked. “What an earth are you talking about? What is Fairyland?”

“Is it safe?” Nobbs looked at Abernathy.

Suddenly, the stage and then the whole crowd burst into song.

Shout, shout up with your song!

Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking.

“We need to know what the police know about us,” Abernathy said as the singing continued around them. The four women, Dinah, Nobbs, Abernathy, and Tansy, had formed a tight knot, leaving Constance hanging off the edge.

March, march, swing you along,

Wide blows our banner, and hope is waking.

Dinah frowned back at Constance. “Can you help?” she said at last.

“Help how?” Constance replied, cupping her ears.

Song with its story, dreams with their glory.

“The police.”

Lo! They call, and glad is their word.

Constance searched Dinah’s face, the bright pink cheeks shining against the cold, her eyes hopeful but wandering. Dinah started to turn away.

Loud and louder it swells.

Constance caught hold of Dinah’s hand, made her turn. “I think I know a way,” she said.