Birdcage Walk (21 page)

She made to embrace him but he fended her off and strode away, his jaw set though his cheeks were still wet. Left alone in the dark, Charlotte stood perfectly still and numb. Just a moment before, he had stood here with her, hating her but with her nonetheless. He had heard her, and replied, and she had been within reach of touching him. Now, the heavy certainty that she would never be in that position again came to press on her shoulders. She watched his slight figure retreat and then run as a bus came rumbling into view.

After it had gone, taking George with it, she stood unmoving for many minutes, not even feeling the chill of the icy night creep around her. The eventual arrival in the distance of a second south-bound bus made her start, and brought her back to the present. She made to move towards its glinting lights but her frozen feet were clumsy and the treacherous ground rose up to trip her. As she stumbled, a shadow somehow blacker than the pitch dark of the marshland loomed over her, the bitter scent of lemons filling her nostrils. Whimpering in fright she scrambled to her feet only to sense the drawing back of a fist behind her, like an intake of breath. Then the sharp crack of bone broke the air and the lights blew out.

The bus was almost empty, and seemed to sway and judder its way south more perilously because of it. George sat downstairs at the very front, his back to the few passengers. Now that he was alone he was surprised at how little relief he felt for it. The conductor came and took his fare and George was dismayed to find that he’d spent almost all the money he’d taken out with him. Some of it had been Cissy’s, too. He would only just be able to afford the second bus home. Just before they reached Finsbury Park, close to Manor House and where George would change, the bus abruptly stopped. One of the horses had lost a shoe and the half dozen or so passengers were ushered out onto the street.

George began to walk, glad of the cold air and the busier streets after the eerie desolation of the marshes. According to a fob watch displayed in the window of a pawnbroker’s it was half past eleven; in half an hour it would be Christmas Day. If he walked home from here, he might also have enough for a last drink—he wasn’t sure he would sleep without it.

Hoxton, when he reached it, was almost as busy as when he and Charlotte had left it hours before. Some of the pubs had closed and their patrons, tight with drink, had spilled out onto the street, releasing a pungent aroma of trapped smoke, spirits, sweat, and cheap scent. Further on, just off Eagle Wharf Road, a voice shouting his name turned out to be Alf Jones. His cheeks red and his collar undone, he half fell out of The Robert Peel, having spotted his friend through the window.

“Alright there, George? I thought it was you going along with your head down. Come and get a quick drink in, they’ve only just rung the bell.”

“I can’t, Alf. I’ve got to get on.”

“Get on where? It’s Christmas Eve and it’s nearly midnight. There’s nowhere better to get on to than the pub, is there?”

He went to clap George on the back but paused instead.

“Here George, what’s wrong with your face? It looks like it’s been scratched. I think you’re bleeding.”

George put his hands to his face and felt the sting of his grazed skin where Charlotte’s nails had scraped.

“It’s nothing, I’m fine. Got into a scuffle with some fellow, didn’t I? Now, are we going to have a drink or what?”

The pub was stuffed with people and the heat off their cramped bodies rose as a stale fug. In the thick of the crowd it was dark, the lights at the bar no match for the press of drinkers. George led Alf to a dark corner where they wouldn’t be so jostled. He was glad of the dim light now that Alf had pointed out Charlotte’s scratches. He felt enough of a fool without having people stare at a woman’s nail marks down his cheeks.

The two men were halfway through their pint when someone shouted out that the hour was going to strike. An expectant hush fell upon the crowd until the publican held his pocket watch aloft at the bar.

“Midnight, ladies and gents. Merry Christmas.”

Alf grinned at George.

“Happy Christmas, mate. I can’t say I’ll be sad to see the back of this year. Roll on 1902, I say. It’s going to be a good one, I’d swear to it. I can feel it in my waters.”

George laughed, and it was as though the earlier part of the evening on the marshes had happened long ago. Charlotte would be home by now or perhaps getting off the bus, but he didn’t want to think about her for the moment. He clinked his beer glass against his friend’s and then drained it.

Perhaps fifteen minutes’ walk from the disturbance on the marshes, Dr. Wainwright had taken his favourite chair, next to the wide bay window. While a freezing mist still clung to the wild expanse of the marshes, it was a clear day on Tottenham’s High Road. The street outside was eerily quiet, with none of the hubbub that the doctor had grown used to, and which he could usually hear clearly from both his armchair and the small medical practice attached to the house. From his position in the snug room, the pleasant view of pale blue sky above the villas opposite might have depicted a spring day in a provincial town rather than Christmas day in London.

It was as he was looking out and appreciating the rare tranquillity that some dark movement on his peripheral vision made him glance down the gentle hill. A man in a sober suit and a police constable were walking purposefully up it, their breath at the exertion coming from their mouth in short, sharp puffs. The constable’s tall hat cast a shadow across his face, but the silver badge on its front gleamed and dazzled in the winter sun.

The knock on the door sounded almost instantly and, although the doctor knew it must be for him, he waited for Ivy to answer it, and to hear the rumble of voices before he rose out of the warm seat. He found the suited man in the hall, his hat in his hands. The policeman remained outside. Ivy bobbed in the man’s general direction and then scuttled back to the kitchen, excitement writ on her face.

“Dr. Wainwright, is it? My name is Inspector Hart. I’m sorry to disturb you on Christmas Day but I must ask you to come to the marshes. There’s been a . . . ”

He glanced anxiously at Mrs. Wainwright, who, alerted to the surprise arrival by the maid, had suddenly appeared in the hallway.

“Well, there’s been an outrage. A woman found there by a couple of lads playing football.”

“Is she badly hurt?” The doctor strode across the hall to fetch his bag.

“No, sir. She’s already gone. Stone cold, she is. Must’ve happened in the night.”

Mrs. Wainwright made a little gasp and turned pale.

“Kathleen, my dear. Do not mention this to the children and upset them. I will try to be back in time for dinner but tell Hannah not to wait for me.”

He kissed his wife’s forehead and then she fetched his hat and coat.

“Oh, Arthur. Today of all days.”

He looked at her reprovingly and she dropped her eyes. Behind him, Inspector Hart cleared his throat quietly and looked around, his professional instincts absorbing the dark wood of the banister and the framed family portraits crowding the striped wallpaper. From the back of the house, he could smell roasting meat and oranges and for a moment he wished he was in his own house, his wife and three girls around him.

When the three men were clear of the house, walking the gentle descent towards the marshes, the doctor spoke.

“Have you seen her yourself?”

“Just a glimpse, doctor. There was a lot of blood on her face. Potts was the first on the scene, fetched by a boy.” He consulted his small notebook. “Harry Fox.”

“Did Potts check for a pulse?”

“No need, he said. She was as pale and cold as marble.”

“Nevertheless, he should have checked. We must hurry. The faintest signs of life may still be there.”

When the doctor reached the body he could see immediately why Constable Potts had not doubted his eyes. She had that absolute stillness that no living being, however gravely injured, ever had. Indeed she did resemble a statue carved out of marble, the bones of her jaw set and hard and those of her cheeks sharp under the unforgiving white glare of the fog-bound winter sun. The mingled blood and dirt had generally dried and crusted over, though it remained wet, almost sticky, where the eye was missing.

Knowing in his every fibre that she was dead, he reached for her wrist regardless, aware that the Inspector was observing him. It seemed to him that her flesh was colder than the ground itself, though when he pressed it between his fingers there was still some give in its texture, the thin tendons grating against each other, belying its stony appearance. The fingers were half-curled into claws already; rigor mortis setting in. There was a good deal of blood, dried to reddish-brown, on the hands and particularly under the nails, some of which had broken off. The doctor replaced the hand gently, his fingertips brushing the soft green fabric of her jacket. He noticed that a button was missing from the front of it.

“Was the body like this when you found it?” he directed the question at Potts, who stood with a fellow constable and looked ashen behind his dark moustache.

“Yes, sir. I haven’t touched it. The boy who found her said he moved her hat, though. It was laid over her face and I think curiosity must have got the better of him. She hasn’t been moved though, not an inch.”

A noise made them all stop and turn, to see that the ambulance and another carriage had drawn up at the edge of marsh. Leading the way was a tall man in a long overcoat, his homburg hat set very straight on his head. He seemed to reach them in a few strides and immediately extended his hand to the doctor, who hurriedly got to his feet and brushed the loose dirt from his trousers before taking it.

“You must be the doctor. I am Chief Inspector Pearn. Charles Pearn. What do you think?”

“Dr. Wainwright. I have been with the body only a couple of minutes myself, but she has clearly been dead some hours. Rigor mortis has already commenced. More than that, I cannot say until I have examined the body properly at the mortuary.”

Pearn glanced cursorily at the body in the ditch and nodded.

“Hart, I trust you’ve made all the necessary notes, names of the witnesses and such.”

“Yes, sir. Potts is going to go and speak to the boy who found her again, too. He was too shocked to say much before. Sir, I was thinking that whoever done it must’ve been ashamed of it.”

“I would say it seems rather out of character to feel remorse once you’ve gouged a girl’s eye out. Why do you think so?”

“The boy moved the hat before we got here, unfortunately. But he says that when he found it, it had been laid over her face in such as way that it looked like it had been placed there quite carefully.”

“Hmm, well, write it down. A useful observation, perhaps, though we mustn’t get too fanciful. Let’s get her moved now, before the blood freezes in our own veins. Doctor, you’ll ride with me to the mortuary?”

Pearn turned on his heel then and, as he strode away, began to whistle.

After the hard-bitten cold of outside, where the frost had muffled the jangle of the few carriages out on the New North Road and left the air tasting clean, the house felt stuffy, the air stale. Annie tore off her hat and sat down in a heap with her coat still on. Ted looked up at her from his customary seat.

“No luck?”

“I can’t find her, Ted. I don’t know where she can have got to. I’ve got a bad feeling about this and I can’t shake it off.”

“Annie, you only realised she weren’t in her bed half an hour ago. There’s no call to have hysterics about it. Not yet, there ain’t. She’ll turn up, bad penny that she is. She’ll have got tight last night and stayed over somewhere, that’s all. Once her stomach starts grumbling, she’ll come home right as rain.”

“Well, she’s not with George. Old Mr. Woolfe answered the door and said George come in on his own before one. He’s still asleep. Something’s happened, Ted. I think I’ll go to the police station. Do you think anyone’s there on Christmas Day?”

Ted rolled his eyes.

“You will not go to the police, they’ll think you’re simple. It’s not ten o’clock in the morning and you’re wanting to report someone missing who was out drinking on Christmas Eve. You’re lucky I’m not missing too, amount I put away last night. Even you were tipsy, Annie.”

She looked up at him distractedly and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“Do you think that’s all it is?”

“Besides, you can’t have the peelers sniffing round here. Where do you think I got that joint from yesterday, on Christmas Eve? All the decent butchers round here have had empty shelves for two days.”

“Where’d you get it? You been pinching off the trains again? God, Ted.”

The crease in Annie’s brow deepened with the fresh worry.

“You think I’ve got a nerve. This driver Johnny knows, his house backs right onto the railway lines. His missus knows when he’s due past and she gets her and the kiddies out there, waiting for him to go by so he can chuck ‘em whatever he’s skimmed off the load. Never been caught yet.”

“I don’t want to hear it. What I don’t know won’t hurt me and I’d have enjoyed that meat better without knowing where it come from. I’m telling you now, Ted, if Lottie’s not back by noon I’m going out to look for her again and you’re coming with me.”

She took off her coat and clumped up the stairs to the room Charlotte shared with little Eddie. The bed was still made, the sheet smooth and chill to the touch. She’d done it herself the night before, after her sister had left in such a flurry of excitement, her possessions scattered liberally around the room. Perhaps there was some clue to Lottie’s whereabouts that she hadn’t noticed before.

Moving around in her agitation, Annie’s foot caught against something that made a scraping noise. She ducked down and saw a small tin box. Knowing she shouldn’t, and wondering if she was only allowing herself to pry into Charlotte’s private things on the pretext of her worry, she lifted the lid. There were letters, which were of no use to Annie, but on the very top was a tiny paper-wrapped package with a single word scrawled on it. She traced the spiky A of her own name with her fingertip and realised that it was her Christmas present. Charlotte had said she would get her one.

She unpeeled it quickly, feeling tears well behind her eyes. Inside was the gold hatpin topped with a filigree-winged bird, its green eye winking at her in the weak sunlight that shafted in at the window. Annie let out her breath in a rush and clasped the pin to her.

“Oh, Lottie,” she whispered in a kind of prayer. “Come back to me, Lottie.”