5

T

he grim black stallion waited at the side entrance to the Yard. Cunning, thought Lestrade, of this Boadicea. No motor car. No registration plate. And he noticed too that the hansom’s number was illegible, caked in mud. And it was difficult to find much mud in the middle of London, especially now the fog had cleared and the streets were bright in the sharp sunshine.

‘Mr Lestrade?’ The cabbie touched his hat.

The superintendent looked up, shielding his eyes against the glare of the sky. If the cabbie was a woman, it was a brilliant disguise.

‘Who are you working for?’ Lestrade asked him, having no time to stand on ceremony.

‘Myself,’ the cabbie told him. ‘Are you goin’ to get in?’

It was probably one of the last horse-cabs in London and Lestrade clambered into it. He wouldn’t be sorry to see these go. They were draughty and the leather squeaked. Above all, they were anathema to anyone with a penchant for mal de mer. Or even formaldehyde.

On the seat next to him was an envelope, marked clearly with his name. The cabbie whipped on the horse and the animal swung left into the Embankment traffic, honking and belching its way through the late morning. He ripped open the envelope, and read the letter – ‘Dear Mr Lestrade, By the time you have read this, Sergeant Blevvins will be secured in a secret place with a stick of dynamite tied to his unmentionables. The cabbie will take you to Birdcage Walk. At Wellington Barracks you will alight. Another cab will take you on the next nether limb of your journey. At twelve o’clock precisely, Boadicea’s henchwoman will light Sgt Blevvins’s fuse. It will not be a pretty sight.’

Lestrade didn’t doubt it. He stuck his head out of the window. ‘Why have you gone this way, you idiot?’ he yelled. The cab was rattling down the Mall, Buckingham Palace, grey and resplendent, ahead.

‘I thought you’d appreciate the view,’ the cabbie shouted back.

‘Cut across the grass,’ Lestrade ordered.

‘I can’t do that,’ the cabbie told him. ‘I’d lose my licence.’

‘If you don’t,’ Lestrade snarled, ‘that’s nothing to what a colleague of mine is going to lose. Do it!’

The cabbie hauled the reins to the left, muttering about the shocking state of fares, and the hansom hurtled off towards the lake, ducks flying skywards at its approach. Startled strollers looked up, nannies swerved their perambulators and a Park policeman blew his whistle before giving chase.

* * *

IN AN UNMARKED MOTOR car behind, Constable Tait saw it happen. ‘Has the guv’nor gone mad?’ he asked Lyall, gripping the seat next to him.

‘Full throttle, Arnold,’ Lyall shouted above the engine’s roar. ‘Mr Henry’s orders were explicit. Stay with him at all costs.’

‘But we’ll be arrested!’ Tait pointed out.

‘All in a day’s work,’ Lyall barked. ‘Put your foot down.’

‘It’s on the bloody grass, now!’ Tait shouted and the Darracq screamed as its front wheels bounced across country. ‘I thought we were supposed to be subtle about this. Mr Henry said “Softlee, softlee”.’

‘Yes, he did, didn’t he,’ Lyall screamed as Tait yanked his way through the gears at random, coughing and jerking. The car sounded rather rough too. ‘I didn’t really know what he was talking about, did you? Hello, he’s stopped.’

* * *

THE CAB HAD. AT BIRDCAGE Walk, Lestrade leapt out of one hansom and into another. Passers-by could not have been aware of the miracle they were witnessing – Sholto Lestrade paying his own cab fare. The second cabbie had his orders and he rattled off through Buckingham Court and Grosvenor Place into leafy Belgravia, Tait and Lyall now maintaining a more sedate pace behind him.

* * *

‘HE’S GOING RIGHT, INTO Hobart Place.’ Lyall pointed. ‘Right. Go right!’

‘Who’s driving this bloody thing? We’ve already drawn attention to ourselves. Look at all those bloody women.’ Tait gestured wildly at the pedestrians on the pavement. ‘Any one of them could be working under cover for the WSPU. Act casual.’

* * *

AT EATON SQUARE, THE cab lurched to a halt. Lestrade’s feet no sooner hit the pavement than he had sprung into a third vehicle. Unfortunately, the door was shut and he bounced off it, before catching his breath and the handle and landing on yet another letter. The cab jerked forwards, swinging wildly around the Square before doubling back into Eaton Mews.

* * *

‘WHERE’D HE GO?’ TAIT’S head was twisting in all directions.

‘Damn and buggeration!’ Lyall slapped the dashboard. ‘Lost him.’

Tait wrenched at the handbrake and sat cradling the wheel. ‘Are you going to tell Mr Henry, or am I?’

Lyall stepped out of the motor. ‘Feet were made before these things, Arnold; I have it on good authority. I’ll go this way. You go that. House to house.’

‘And if a woman answers?’

‘Hang up!’ Lyall said and dashed off along the cobbled surface of the Mews. There was no cab. Not even any horse droppings. Sholto Lestrade had vanished from the face of the earth.

* * *

NED BLEVVINS APPEARED to be doing his Samson impression in the basement of the large house that backed on to Eaton Square. His arms were outstretched and his hands rested on two marble pillars to which he was chained. His legs were spread wide too and strapped to his left was a tourniquet into which a thoughtful member of the WSPU had tied with a pink ribbon a single, rather tasteful stick of dynamite.

Lestrade had been whisked up the side steps, blindfolded quickly and led through the corridors of no power by unseen hands. He knew he was being taken down and he felt the chill and damp of a basement around his ears. As the blindfold was whipped off and his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he made out Ned Blevvins standing like a lamb for the slaughter, tethered like a goat.

‘Blevvins?’ His voice was oddly distorted in the empty, low-vaulted room.

‘We’ll ask the questions,’ a voice interrupted from the darkness.

Lestrade turned to face the apparition who stood framed in a doorway to his left. A woman rather smaller than the late Queen stood dwarfed by a magnificent pair of Amazons. Lestrade remembered reading about these at school. If what he had read was right, these two could only muster a pair of breasts between them.

‘You will release this man now,’ Lestrade said levelly.

The diminutive woman emerged into a pool of light. She was fair-haired, nodding in the direction of middle age and had a slight stoop. ‘Esmerelda,’ she said softly. ‘The light.’

Courtesy of Mr Edison, the basement room lit up. A naked bulb hung like a dead man from the off-white ceiling. Blevvins was not only bound, he was gagged. Only his eyes, rolling in his head, conveyed any message. It was, as usual, gibberish.

‘Thank you for coming, Superintendent,’ the little woman said. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ She gestured to a chair.

‘I didn’t exactly have a choice,’ Lestrade told her. ‘And if you don’t mind, I’ll stand. Bearing in mind my colleague’s predicament, I think I’ll give chairs a wide berth at the moment.’

‘Typical man’s comment,’ one of the Amazons sneered. ‘They can talk about birth, but they don’t go through it. Oh, dear me, no.’

‘Thank you, Godiva,’ the little woman said sharply. ‘We aren’t here to engage in semantics.’

Lestrade was glad to hear it. He’d had enough trouble with women, let alone Jewish ones. ‘You are ...?’ he asked the tiny one.

‘Let’s just say I am called Boadicea,’ she said. ‘Esmerelda and Godiva are not these ladies’ real names either. All three of our noms de plume were wronged, in history and fiction, by men. Semper eadem, you might say.’

Lestrade might, if only he knew what it meant. ‘Kidnapping is an extremely serious offence,’ he said. ‘Not to mention pointing a howitzer at the Headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. Where did you get it, by the way? Not off the peg at Liberty’s, I shouldn’t think.’

‘We have our methods, Mr Lestrade,’ Boadicea said, lifting a hefty Havana from a box on a table beside her. ‘Let it go at that.’

‘What do you want?’

The Amazons’ eyes flickered to their mistress. ‘Your help,’ she said.

‘My help?’ Lestrade repeated. There was a muffled moan from the corner. ‘Shut up, Blevvins. I’m not even considering what to do with you yet, but I guarantee it will make your eyes water. My help with what?’

‘With the death of Emily Davison.’

‘Who?’ Lestrade asked.

There was an inrush of air from the Amazons. As one woman they took a pace forward, but Boadicea’s bony fingers held them back. ‘I will assume,’ she said, through pursed lips, ‘that that question was designed to needle? Emily Wilding Davison died eight days ago under the hoofs of the king’s horse at the Derby.’

‘I do read the papers.’ Lestrade nodded. ‘It was tragic.’

‘More than that, Mr Lestrade,’ Boadicea said. ‘It was murder.’

The silence was tangible until Lestrade destroyed it by sliding back the chair. He risked a booby trap and inched his way into it. All was well. ‘Murder?’ he repeated.

‘I understand from Emmeline Pankhurst that you are familiar with the crime.’ Boadicea blew smoke rings to the ceiling.

‘I have a nodding acquaintance with it,’ he said. ‘But I understood Miss Davison to have committed suicide.’

Boadicea glided forward further into the pool of light. She appeared to move on castors, for her head stayed absolutely level the whole time. She sat on the chair on the other side of the table from Lestrade.

‘It was Lloyd George,’ she said softly.

‘Metaphysically speaking, you mean,’ Lestrade said.

Boadicea frowned. ‘No, I mean literally, Mr Lestrade. Oh, I don’t suppose he was man enough to do his own dirty work. No, he would have sent some thug, a henchman, to Epsom.’

Lestrade blinked. ‘The Police Gazette said ...’

‘The Police Gazette is written by a man, Mr Lestrade.’

‘But the Daily Mail ... ’

‘Alfred Harmsworth’s chauvinist rag? You only have to listen to the paper’s name to grasp its affinities.’

‘So what did happen?’

‘Emily went to the Derby with her sisters to fly the flag.’ Boadicea produced another large cheroot and one of her henchwomen lit it, before standing back to attention behind her chair. ‘There were four of them. The names of the others need not concern you. Emily was a short woman, not much taller than I and her view of the course was restricted. Someone suggested she climb on to the rail to see the approaching horses. She’d put a few bob down on Thanks for the Mammaries at 64 to 1. All for the Cause, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Lestrade nodded.

‘As the king’s horse, Anmer, came tight on the curve, someone pushed her. She hit the animal’s chest and she lost her balance. There was blood gushing from her nose and mouth. The horse somersaulted right over her.’

‘The jockey was badly hurt, I understand.’

‘Herbert Jones? He shouldn’t have been riding the king’s horse, should he? He could have been marching shoulder to shoulder with our sisters at Hyde Park that very day. As for poor Emily, her skull was shattered. They got her into a motor car and she was taken to hospital.’

‘Where?’

‘Epsom Cottage.’

‘Where she died some days later?’

Boadicea nodded, as her namesake probably did all those centuries ago when her blue-painted harridans had put the fear of the gods into the Roman legions.

‘You were there?’ Lestrade asked. ‘At the Derby?’

‘Personally, no. But I know a woman who was.’

‘Who?’

Boadicea smiled. ‘I’m not sure she’ll speak to you.’

‘That’s not very helpful,’ Lestrade commented. ‘Either you want my help on this or ...’

‘Or Emily Davison will go down as a martyr to the Cause; yes, I know.’

‘Tell me, why do you think Lloyd George is responsible? According to your movement, all men are beasts, aren’t they? There must be thousands of us who’d happily push a woman under the king’s horse. It happens every day of the week.’

‘You’re being flippant, Superintendent,’ Boadicea said through pursed lips. ‘In truth, I could expect no more.’

Lestrade flashed a glance at Blevvins, like little Jack Horner to the left of the low-vaulted, shadowed room.

‘Do I understand,’ he asked, ‘that you went to all this trouble, aiming a howitzer at Scotland Yard, kidnapping one of its officers, just to enlist my help? Couldn’t you simply have asked?’

A smile flitted briefly over Boadicea’s lips. ‘Would you have come?’ she asked him.

‘Probably not,’ he admitted.

Boadicea adopted that face and that pose known to men the world over; the one women do so well. The one that says ‘I told you so’.

‘Let my man go,’ Lestrade said softly. ‘And I’ll see what I can do.’

Boadicea shook her head slowly. ‘That’s somewhat akin to what Mr Lloyd George said back in 1910 and Mr Asquith in 1911 and Mr Churchill in 1912. It is wearing a little thin, Mr Lestrade.’

‘You never told me why Lloyd George,’ he said.

Boadicea stood up and looked down at him. ‘Lloyd George because Emily Davison blew up his house at Walton Heath.’

Lestrade raised an eyebrow. The Special Branch had been hunting high and low for that particular mad bomber since Easter. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘That puts a rather different complexion on things.’

‘It does?’ Boadicea stopped in mid-turn.

Lestrade nodded. ‘Let my man go,’ he said, ‘and I’ll find out who killed your Emily Davison.’ 

Boadicea’s eyes flicked across to Blevvins, then to Lestrade. She searched the sad, brown eyes for a moment, the sallow, rat-like face. Then she issued her commands. ‘Godiva, release him.’

‘But Boa ...’ the henchwoman burst out in disbelief.

‘Do as I say,’ the ancient Briton hissed. ‘For God’s sake, don’t show any divisions in our ranks now. Not to him!’ And she jerked her grey, tousled head in Lestrade’s direction.

Godiva strode across to the helpless figure of Blevvins. Her Bowie knife flashed in the darkness and from the gagged squeal from Blevvins, it sounded as though she’d hacked off the unmentionables Boadicea spoke of in her letters. In fact, she had merely cut the dynamite stick from his legs.

‘I’m going to cut your hands free now,’ she growled, standing nose to nose with the detective-sergeant. ‘One bit of nonsense from you, Sonny Jim, and I’ll shove this up your arse.’

Even Blevvins blenched at the woman’s lack of refinement. He’d already had ample opportunity to assess Godiva’s biceps. If the Yard had been more enlightened, she’d be a natural for the tug-o’-war team. Blevvins nodded, anxious to be rid of the ropes, the gag, the whole desperate situation.

There was a rip and the sergeant’s hands fell free from the pillars that held him. His ankles of course were still bound and his legs spread. And he didn’t care at all for the glint in his gaoler’s eyes.

‘Don’t tease the idiot,’ Boadicea commanded. ‘After all, he may have a mother somewhere.’

Lestrade didn’t doubt it. But he was less sure of a father.

‘Where will your inquiries begin?’ Boadicea asked him as Blevvins gasped in relief when Godiva let slip his gag.

‘The woman who was there,’ Lestrade said. ‘I’ll start with her.’

Boadicea nodded and took a folded piece of paper from her cuff. ‘She may not talk to you,’ she said again.

Lestrade nodded. ‘If she doesn’t, I may never find your murderer.’

Boadicea smiled. ‘If she doesn’t,’ she said, ‘you will never find the murderer of your sergeant, either.’

And Blevvins was more than alarmed at the smile on the faces of both of them.

* * *

MOST PLACES HAVE THEIR ups and Downs. But Epsom had its salts too. While Ned Blevvins assured everybody at the Yard that he’d been held down all morning by upwards of thirty women and that if Lestrade hadn’t arrived, he’d have given them all a good seeing-to – at least, the pretty ones – Tait and Lyall limped back to Headquarters.

They were most relieved to find the problem solved, but Edward Henry knew what the late edition of the Standard would be screaming and he turfed the rookies out again on a fruitless raid on the house at Eaton Mews. As everyone with a wit slightly higher than Blevvins had realized, the place was empty. The birds had flown. Not a single woman was helping police with their inquiries.

And Lestrade had gone South by electric railway.

* * *

HENRY WICKER HAD BEEN quietly grazing his cattle, minding his own business, back in 1618, when he’d accidentally discovered some mineral springs. Seventy years later, Epsom was a famous spa and polite society came out from Town to take the salts. The train wound its way past The Durdans, where the Roseberys lived in palatial seclusion and into the little station. Only the previous month, Lord Rosebery had told a delighted world that he might never make another speech. The cheering took several minutes to die down. At the station, the superintendent caught a cab and rattled out in the June sunshine, up the High Street, with its clock tower, and on to the racecourse, all white rails and stands.

It was in the summer of 1778 that a riotous group of the Fancy had met at a Surrey country house and founded a race for three-year-old fillies. The house was called The Oaks and they named the race after it. Three years later a similar race, but this time for colts and fillies, was organized by the Earl of Derby, leading light of the Fancy in those days. And the Fancy had not missed a Derby Day since.

Tom Eldridge came up to Lestrade’s shoulder, a whippet of a man with the bowed legs of his calling. But he was not a maker of Queen Anne cabinets; he was a jockey, a prince of the turf and he stood on the fatal corner now, in the rather vulgar pink of Lady Cartland, nodding wisely as the superintendent inspected the ground.

‘The going was hard,’ Eldridge remembered.

‘What were you riding?’ Lestrade asked.

It seemed an odd question, but perhaps the Yard man had led a sheltered life. ‘A horse,’ the jockey was able to assure him.

‘I mean.’ Lestrade straightened. ‘What was it called?’

‘Oh, Slasher Mary,’ Eldridge said. ‘By Crikey, out of Kilter. Sweet filly. Goes like a train.’ 

‘Where were you in the field?’ 

‘Twenty-eighth,’ Eldridge told him. 

‘Out of how many?’

‘Twenty-nine. But it was early days. It’s no good rushin’ ’em, y’ see.’ Eldridge tugged off his racing cap. ‘They just can’t be hurried. You’ve got to coax ’em, like.’

‘And the king’s horse?’

‘Anmer? He was just ahead of me. Lucky start.’

‘That was Herbert Jones?’

‘That’s right.’ Eldridge draped his riding cap on the rails. ‘It’s a bleedin’ shame ’bout poor old Herbie. Still, with a bit of luck, he’ll ride again.’

‘Did you see the woman?’

‘Not until she fell.’

‘She fell?’

‘Francis!’ the jockey suddenly yelled to a passing stableboy even shorter than he was. ‘What have I told you?’ And he clipped the lad around the ear. ‘You’ll never get to be ’er Majesty’s favourite jockey if you do that! Yeah, she fell alright.’

‘Didn’t jump, then?’

‘Jump? Oh, a suicide, you mean? Pretty ropey way of doin’ yerself in, ain’t it? I mean, threshin’ machine, ship’s propeller, a little dither in the middle of Tower Bridge when it goes up – that I can understand. But jumpin’ out in front of horses? What if she missed? She damned near did. Behind Anmer was me and behind me was sod all – at that precise moment in time, you understand. If she’d fallen a split second later, all she’d have got would be a muddy nose. As it is, well ... utterly buggered the race for me, I can tell yer. They say ’is Majesty’s none too happy.’

‘Indeed they do. Tell me, Mr Eldridge, did you see anyone behind Miss Davison? To her left or right?’

The jockey thought for a moment. ‘Nah.’ He shrugged. ‘You gotta remember, guv, I’m coming round the corner at the best part of thirty miles an hour. You ain’t got time to take in the crowd. They’re just a blur, whizzing past on the rails. Look at that!’

Lestrade did. The jockey was pointing to the lie of the land, where the green of the Epsom slope was criss-crossed with brown. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘Bloody tyre tracks, that’s what!’ Eldridge spat volubly. ‘Call me old-fashioned if you like, but if I remember my Bible, horses and beasts of the field were made before the motor car. Look at the bloody mess they make. If people want to bring their motors, they should go to bloody Brooklands.’

* * *

HER HAIR WAS THE COLOUR of fine-spun copper and candles danced and circled in her eyes. She wore a dress of claret laced with threads of silver and she held out her wrists to him as though for cuffs.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she said and the years fell away like a mirror, broken at a glance.

Emily Greenbush was wearing the same dress she’d worn when they’d met, all those years ago.

‘You haven’t changed,’ he said.

‘You have.’ She let the wrists fall. ‘You’re married.’

He caught her looking at the gold band on his knuckle. ‘You’re still as sharp as ever,’ he said.

She crossed the drawing-room and lit a lamp, for the evening dews and damps were closing in after the warm June day.

‘You left Curzon Street,’ he said.

‘They’re building a cinematograph palace there now,’ she told him. ‘I thought it was time to go. Do you still decline Scotch on duty?’

‘Yes.’ Lestrade smiled. ‘And before you ask, it’s Thursday. And I still don’t wrestle with ladies on Thursdays.’

It was Emily’s turn to smile. ‘Who is she?’ she asked, inviting Lestrade to sit on the sofa opposite her.

‘Fanny,’ he told her, placing the bowler hat beside him. ‘I’ve known her for years. Her father was an old friend of mine.’

‘Was?’

‘He’s dead,’ Lestrade said. ‘A shooting accident.’

‘Do you have children?’

‘With Fanny? No. Emma – my girl by my first wife – is quite a woman now. At Finishing School.’

‘Well, well.’ Emily Greenbush swept back the long, unbraided hair. ‘I remember Christabel Pankhurst called you a chauvinist lackey when she met you. Sylvia thought you a despoiler of women.’

‘And you?’ he asked her. ‘What did you think of me?’

‘I loved you,’ she said.

He chuckled. ‘I thought you ... annoying, irritating, silly. Oh, and I fell in love with you too.’

Her smile vanished. She felt an iron lump in her throat. ‘Did you tell her?’ she asked him. ‘Did you tell your Emma about you? That you are her father, I mean?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I did. Boadicea didn’t think you’d see me.’

‘Neither did I,’ she said, sighing suddenly to break the moment, wrenching free of those lingering ghosts that had haunted her down the years. ‘Do you remember what I said?’ she asked. ‘That last time we met?’

‘You said ... you said, “One day, we’ll meet in the polling station, my cross next to yours.”’

‘That’s right.’ She nodded. ‘And it’s no nearer now than it was ten years ago.’

‘A lot of water under the bridge,’ Lestrade said. ‘A lot of blood.’

‘Yes.’ Her bright face fell. ‘Emily.’

‘Emily.’ He nodded. ‘Tell me about Emily, Emily.’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say. She was a sister.’

‘And she’s dead.’ The words rang hollow. ‘Boadicea seemed, very intent to get me on this case. She went to quite extraordinary lengths. The least I can do is to earn her opinion of me. Everything. I need it all.’

‘Very well.’ Emily Greenbush took a deep breath. ‘Emily Wilding Davison. She was forty-one. “On the shelf” to use a man’s term. The WSPU prefer “Clean and ready for use”. Let’s see, she was the second of three children. Her father, Charles, was a businessman, but a failure. I think it was because of him she despised men so. She went to Kensington High School and Royal Holloway College, Esher.’

‘Bless you,’ said Lestrade.

‘She took her degree in 1897. Another example of man’s inhumanity to woman, Sholto. They gave her a degree and all she was allowed to do with it was become a governess.’

‘It’s a tough world,’ Lestrade observed, not for the first time.

‘She joined the WSPU in 1906. That’s when I met her.’

‘That’s when we met her too,’ Lestrade said. ‘Her file at the Yard is three inches thick.’

‘I’m sure.’ Emily nodded.

‘Eight imprisonments for stone throwing, post-box firing, window breaking. She was force fed over one hundred times.’

‘They put a tube down your throat,’ Emily said, her eyes wide with the memory of it. ‘It looks small in the doctor’s hand, but in your throat, it clogs and suffocates. You gag, but the tube is there, rammed back by the doctor. The warders have your arms and legs. You can’t move. Your head is in a vice. The porridge is pumped into your mouth, your throat. You choke. You drown ... I can’t describe the pain.’

‘She hid in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons.’ Lestrade pretended he hadn’t heard her, the woman he once had loved. Emily couldn’t describe the pain. And Lestrade couldn’t bear to hear it. All he heard in his head was a cold scream in a stone cell. All he felt was her terror. And her solitude.

‘It was census night,’ he went on. ‘Two years ago.’

‘She threw herself downstairs at Holloway,’ Emily said.

‘The college?’

‘The prison. But she survived.’

‘Is that what happened at the Derby?’ Lestrade asked, leaning closer. ‘Did she try to kill herself again?’

Emily shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Emily was unstable. If she went through that hell more than a hundred times, how could she be otherwise? She was carrying ribbons of our Order, the colours of purple, white and green. I thought she was going to pin one to Anmer’s bridle.’

‘At that speed?’ Lestrade frowned. ‘Impossible.’

‘All I know,’ Emily concentrated, shutting her eyes to remember, ‘All I know is that she said she couldn’t see. As the field came towards us, somebody, a man, said, “Let me help you.” He grabbed her arms. She struggled. Oh, I’m sure he meant no harm, but can you imagine what that did to her? The feel of a man’s hands on her shoulders, lifting her high? She was only a slip of a thing as you men say, light as a feather. Before I knew it, she was up on the rail, several hands holding her. I was pushed forward against the fence. Then ...’ Emily shuddered. ‘Then she fell, was pushed, I don’t know. Her body hurtled past me. There was a sickening thud and the horse went down ...’

She swallowed hard, fighting back the tears. In front of her was a man she’d loved, whose bed she’d shared. But he was right. Too much water. Too much blood. She’d cried in front of him before. She wouldn’t do it again.

‘What happened then?’ he asked.

‘Then?’ Emily was lost, a little girl again in the horror of a memory. She saw Emily Davison somersault endlessly in the air, bounce off the racing horse like a rag-doll, sprawling on the grass, her face a mask of blood. ‘Then, a doctor came from nowhere. I was glad. Funny that, isn’t it? Glad that a man was on hand. A huge crowd gathered, threatening to tear down the rails. A man was helping Emily. I thought she was all right at first. She got up and walked unaided. Then this doctor arrived and she was carried to his motor car.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I tried to follow, but he said there was no room. My friends, my sisters and I, caught a carriage to the hospital. I couldn’t believe Emily’s wounds. When they finally let us see her, she was in coma, her head swathed in bandages. We took turns to be with her.’

‘Did she come to?’

Emily shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘She never spoke again.’ She sighed. ‘It was, I suppose, what she wanted.’ 

‘To die?’ Lestrade frowned.

‘Yes.’ Emily’s face was tilted up to his, defiant again. ‘To die for the Cause. Yes. She’d seen what I’ve seen, Sholto. Men with women’s hair trailing from their jacket lapels. They’re scalps, Sholto, like the savages in America wear on their lances. Trophies of their battles with us. I’ve seen Emily’s dress white with spittle. I’ve seen her face black with bruises ... I’ve seen her eyes closed in death. I don’t think she wanted to live in a world like that.’

He reached for his bowler. ‘This doctor,’ he said, standing up. ‘Is he from the hospital at Epsom?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stood up with him. ‘I didn’t see him again.’

He crossed to the door. ‘Thank you for seeing me, Emily Greenbush,’ he said.

She turned to face him. ‘“For it is the grandest movement”,’ she whispered, ‘“the world has ever seen, And we’ll win the Vote for Women, wearing purple, white and green.”’

He allowed himself a smile. ‘Still fighting,’ he said.

She nodded. And he missed the single tear that rolled down her cheek as he saw himself out.

* * *

THE PRESS, OF COURSE, had a field day. ‘Yard Caught Napping’ bellowed the newsvendors as the City woke the next morning. ‘Are Our Policemen Wonderful?’ pondered the Mail. ‘No, They’re Not!’ The Mirror was sure. Panic-stricken politicians looked frantically under their beds and gave their tweenies more careful scrutiny than usual. In Suffolk, the vicar of Stoke-by-Nayland was defrocked by a frenzied mob of female watercress pickers. And in Frensham, a small army of less-than-reputable ladies had turned their backs on a passing squadron of the Queen’s Bays and pulled their dresses over their heads. The horses had stampeded in disgust. No one felt safe any more.

But Lestrade had no time to worry himself about the Suffragette marches in Hyde Park and the Pilgrimage from the North. He, Tait, Lyall and a rather chastened Blevvins were looking for needles in haystacks – two, to be precise. A medical student and a doctor. It was the old way – house to house, knocking on doors, whole herds of shoe leather. But by the middle of the month, it paid off. Andrew Salway sat in Lestrade’s office drinking a cup of Constable Lyall’s tea.

‘Yes, she was incredibly lucky, really.’

‘Lucky?’ Lestrade’s eyes narrowed, as he looked again at the fresh-faced blond young man, all teeth and stethoscope. ‘She died.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Salway said. ‘But that was the odd thing.’

‘It was?’

The telephone didn’t stop that morning. At a Suffragette rally on Clapham Common, a number of leading politicians’ wives had been arrested. Mrs Lloyd George, Mrs Asquith, Mrs Churchill, Mrs Bonar Law. The Yard coped with those aliases stoically, although they all had to be checked. But when six women all insisted they were Queen Mary, a kind of hysteria set in and the Yard switchboard was jammed as operators hauled feverishly on wires and tubes.

‘Well, yes.’ Salway fished his last bit of collapsed Bath Oliver out of his tea. ‘You see, she was dazed and had a nosebleed, but that was all. Concussed, clearly, but I would not have suspected a fracture of the skull. Obviously, I was wrong.’

‘Did you accompany Miss Davison to the hospital?’

‘No. Dr Cole said he could manage.’

‘Did you know this Cole?’

‘Never saw him before. But then, I don’t have much to do with the Epsom hospital. I’m based at Tommy’s.’

‘Did you visit Miss Davison? In hospital, I mean?’

‘No, I didn’t, I’m afraid.’

‘Would it surprise you, then,’ Lestrade asked, ‘to learn that she died after days in a coma, her face swollen and bloody?’

Salway blinked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Most assuredly it would. The patient had no facial injuries other than a nosebleed. There may have been internal bleeding, of course. Are you telling me she was bandaged?’

‘Heavily across the head, yes. Tell me, Mr Salway, how far is the hospital from the racecourse? How long would it take by car?’

‘By car?’ The medical student screwed up his face in his calculations. ‘Ooh, about ten minutes, I’d say.’

‘Is the road through a built-up area?’

‘No, most of it is across open country. Rather picturesque heathland as a matter of fact. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ Lestrade smiled. ‘Just leaving no stone unturned, as is our wont here at the Yard.’