The Body at the Tower (17 page)

Mary considered what she’d just seen. An expensive but otherwise minimal funeral for a man whose death few seemed to regret. Confirmation of Reid’s tenderness for Mrs Wick. Harkness’s extraordinary attachment to a dead bricklayer, in the face of bristling suspicion from the man’s friends and colleagues. It didn’t amount to much, put like that. Yet something about the charged atmosphere – something unspoken, but lurking behind all those carefully composed expressions – was very wrong. There was a storm coming. An explosion of some sort. And she still couldn’t tell where from.

It seemed daft to stand outside Wick’s house, where the funeral tea was just beginning. She ought really to return to site. Yet she continued to loiter at the street corner, watching the bricklayers and Mrs Wick – helped down from the carriage by Reid, who’d brushed past the waiting attendant – re-enter the house. The female neighbours would be inside, preparing food and keeping the children calm. The meal could go on for ages yet. All the same, Mary prepared herself for a long wait. She could justify it rationally, of course: additional mourners, those who couldn’t afford to forfeit an afternoon’s wages, might turn up. They might, in turn, lead to additional knowledge of Wick’s character. But beyond all that, something like blind instinct told her to wait. And so she did.

It was a good three hours and nearing dusk before something happened, but that something was even more dramatic than she’d imagined. A handful of friends had indeed rolled in through the late afternoon, and the babble of voices and clinking of crockery had increased in volume. But suddenly, there came sharp, distinct voices raised in anger. It was a genuine quarrel between Keenan and Reid, and it escalated for several minutes, despite placating noises from others – mostly female and, Mary guessed, not Mrs Wick. It was truly raucous, now: a vicious-sounding scrap, male voices barking and snarling like savage animals, that made passers-by turn and stare in brief wonderment.

A few minutes later the front door burst open, tearing off one of the hinges, and two bodies tumbled out, already locked together in passionate rage. Mary instinctively stepped back, tucking herself neatly behind a lamppost. The gesture was totally unnecessary. Neither Reid nor Keenan was likely to notice if Queen Victoria herself came strolling down the narrow street.

It was a fight in earnest, no mere display or posturing but a battle between two men who had passed from trust into hatred. Keenan was the larger man and ought to have had the advantage. But Reid fought with grim determination. He seldom missed an opportunity to land a punch, and each blow was placed with care and strategy.

The battle ended only when Mrs Wick ran out of the house, stumbling slightly as she came, and dived between the two men. “Stop! Stop it!” she cried, a desperate expression on her narrow, pale face.

The two men reared back in shock, as though dashed with cold water.

“You call yourselves friends of John’s, and this is what you do?! You come to his house and you fight like dogs, a-shaming me before the neighbours?” She was quite breathless, and held one hand protectively over her belly. “How dare you?”

Reid opened his mouth to protest, to explain, but a sharp gesture from her stopped him mid-breath. Keenan scowled at the road, panting but otherwise silent.

The three figures stood like statues in the dusty road, oblivious of all around them: of the neighbours, young and old, peering out doors and windows with avid hunger; of the friends in Wick’s house, urging them inside; of the frightened tears and babble of the children, clamouring for their mother. All this they ignored.

Finally, Mrs Wick spoke, in a low, trembling voice. “You got no call to be a-quarrelling over Wick’s money. It was his money, and now it’s mine, and I’ll spend it as I like.
You
—” She stabbed a finger at Keenan, who stood there, sullen and stolid. “You mind your own business. You got your wage and the other money besides, a bigger share than Wick ever got, I daresay, and I ain’t never said a word. And
you
” – she rounded on Reid, who flinched as from a blow – “you got no call to speak for me.” She was panting as she finished this speech.

By now, Reid and Keenan each had something of the disciplined schoolboy about them, one surly and unresponsive, the other shuffling his feet and not daring to meet her gaze.

Mrs Wick folded her arms, a gesture both protective and defiant. “Get thee gone.” When the two men only gaped stupidly at her, she stamped her foot. “Go on! You got no right to be here, a-spoiling everything, and teaching the children your bad ways.” Reid looked at her, wounded as a puppy, but she stuck out her jaw stubbornly. “Go, then, the both of you!”

In silence, Reid and Keenan made their departures. Keenan moved with care, planting each foot squarely before transferring his body-weight – a walk very unlike his usual gait. He must have had a great deal to drink. Reid followed mechanically, unable to stop glancing over his shoulder to where Mrs Wick stood, arms folded. After a minute, though, he shook his head angrily and sped up, swerving neatly around Keenan and disappearing down the street.

Mary let out a long, shaky exhalation. She’d not realized she’d been holding her breath. Her fingers, too, tingled from being clenched tight. That was what she’d waited to see. What “other money” had the widow meant, precisely? It was clear enough, now, that Keenan, Reid and Wick were all “on the take”; possible, too, that the hod-carriers were involved. No wonder Keenan was slow to engage a replacement for Wick. It wasn’t a simple matter of finding a competent brickie; it meant finding someone they could trust.

Someone bent.

Someone like them.

Sixteen

H
er final stop this evening was Peter Jenkins’s cellar. As she picked her way through the stinking cesspools of Bermondsey, the air grew thicker and more humid, coating her throat with dust. The weather-beaten door was slightly ajar tonight, and no one answered her knock. She rapped again, then pushed the door open. “Hello?”

No reply. Inside was still and quiet, sticky and fetid. She let her eyes adjust to the dim light before advancing. Still nobody. She made her way to the cellar hatch, half-holding her breath. The hatch was already propped open and she stared down for a moment into the cellar’s murky depths. “Jenkins? You there?”

Again, no reply. With a sigh, she prepared to climb down the rotting ladder. She hoped that this would be the last time. The Academy should surely help Jenkins’s father meet the cost of clean, safe lodgings. Her foot was on the top rung when somebody shrieked in her ear, “Get out of my house!”

“Gah!” Mary jumped, nearly tumbling down the ladder. Something swiped at her face – something foul and prickly – and she batted it away, spitting in disgust. It was the straw end of a broom.

As it clattered to the floor, she saw the hunchbacked old woman who’d opened the door to her last time. She was clearly terrified and now she flew at Mary, gnarled claws seeking to tear out her eyes. “Get out! Get out!”

“I knocked!” shouted Mary, twisting away from those cold, crooked fingers. “I’m here to see Jenkins!”

“Get! I ain’t got naught to steal, nohow!”

“I’m not here to steal! Nobody answered when I knocked!”

Eventually, the old woman stopped her feeble attack, exhausted. “Young man,” she croaked, a terrible, helpless expression on her face, “I ain’t got nothing. You see for yourself. There ain’t nothing for to take.”

Mary shook her head. “I’m not a thief,” she said again, enunciating clearly. “I’m here to see Peter Jenkins.”

“Eh?”

“Peter Jenkins!” shouted Mary. She pointed to the cellar. “The boy!”

The old woman shook her head. “Ain’t nobody lives down there, lad.”

“Peter Jenkins lives there,” insisted Mary, “with his family.”

The old woman shook her head again. “The lad Jenkins moved out, yesterday morn. Took the babies with him.”

“Where did he go?”

The woman shrugged. “Somewhere better, I suppose. Ain’t much worse out there.”

Mary privately agreed. “You don’t know where he went? Was it nearby?”

“He just upped and went. Didn’t say nothing.”

That couldn’t possibly be good news. Yet… “What about his father? Did he go, too?”

“His pa?” The woman looked at Mary, confused. But her eyes were clear and alert, and her mind certainly didn’t seem to be wandering. “He ain’t got no pa.”

“Yes, he has. He’s a joiner or something, isn’t he?”

She shook her head. “He ain’t nothing. Jimmy Jenkins been dead these past two years.”

Friday, 8 July

Coral Street, Lambeth

Despite her concern for Peter Jenkins, Mary slept better that night than she had since arriving at Miss Phlox’s. It was a combination, she decided, of exhaustion and experience. Even Rogers’s bed-shaking snores hadn’t spoiled her rest. Once he’d left the room, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched sore muscles. Did she have time for a wash? She investigated the amount of fresh water in the jug by the washstand and had just decided she did when the door banged open and somebody staggered into the narrow room. It was Winnie, the maid. She was lugging a mop and bucket.

At the sight of Mary, Winnie’s eyes widened and she blushed fiercely. “P-pardon,” she managed to say after a few seconds. “I thought – I didn’t – I never knew you was in here. You ain’t come in for a couple nights.”

Mary shrugged. “Sometimes I stay with friends.”

Winnie nodded. She was staring at Mary again, in that fixed way of hers, and showed no signs of leaving.

Mary began to pull on her boots. Apparently, any sort of wash would have to wait.

“Where?”

“What d’you mean, ‘Where’?”

Winnie’s gaze was fixed on the floor, which she mopped with careful, vigorous strokes. “Where do your friends live? Limehouse? Poplar?”

It was hardly a subtle approach; everyone knew that east London had significant south Asian and south-east Asian populations. Mary had spent all week dreading this moment. But now that Winnie had finally found the courage to ask, however clumsily, it seemed foolish to dissemble. “No,” she said. “In St John’s Wood.” Winnie’s expression – what she could see of it – was carefully still. “They’re not Chinese, although my father was.”

Winnie’s head snapped up, delight stretching her normally downturned features into an eager smile. A rapid-fire string of questions, all in Cantonese, poured from her lips.

This was the bit Mary hated, and no small part of the reason she always dodged questions about her race. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand you.”

Winnie’s mouth fell open in an expression of dismay so foolish it was difficult not to smile. “You don’t understand your own language?”

“No,” said Mary firmly. She had no intention of entering into explanation or apology.

“But your father – he did not teach you?”

“He’s dead.”

“And your mother…?”

“Dead. And a
gwei lo
.” That was about all the Cantonese she knew. And she’d got the inflection wrong.

“Ohhh…”

The pity in Winnie’s voice was both moving and irksome, and Mary was glad for a reason to leave. She shrugged on her jacket and said, “I mayn’t be back tonight.” The last thing she wanted was Winnie creating an opportunity to question her further.

She stalked from the lodging-house in a bitter mood. People were so damned nosy, so obsessively intent on categorizing and classifying. She would for ever be plagued by that question or variations thereon, and there would never be a satisfactory way to answer. If she was untruthful, it was a denial of her blood. If she met the question directly, she became an object of pity or a lesser species; a mongrel. The only reasonable solution was to do the very thing she’d done for years: keep her head down, often literally, and avoid the issue entirely.

For the thousandth time, she wondered what her father would have done. He’d been a brave man, a clever man, highly regarded in their little community. Mary had learned, just the previous year, that he’d perished trying to uncover the truth. Ironically, he was so lost she didn’t even know what about. But when she’d made that limited, all-transforming discovery, it had affirmed her resolve to work for the Agency.

To uncover truths.

To serve the truth.

To live a life worthy of her father’s approval.

The jade pendant he’d left for her – the only thing that had survived the fire at the Lascars’ refuge, and her sole memento of childhood – was curled safely in a drawer at the Academy. It was her most precious belonging. There still remained the problem of how to reconcile that pendant, a talisman of her Chinese heritage, with her equally powerful desire to bury entirely the question of her race. But she would have time enough to think of that once she was Mary, just Mary, again.

Seventeen

Palace yard, Westminster

I
t was an odd, sluggish, unbalanced sort of morning, with heavy air pressure and little prospect of that much-needed storm. Keenan didn’t turn up for work at all, to general puzzlement and Reid’s poorly disguised relief. It was less certain how Harkness viewed this absence. He ought to be livid; demand an explanation; discipline such a sloppy foreman. But nothing in Harkness’s treatment of Keenan so far made this likely. If anything, Harkness seemed to avoid looking in the brickies’ direction altogether, in order to avoid the fact of Keenan’s absence.

The site engineer seemed to have had a bad night: he was waxy of complexion and the half-moons beneath his eyes were a deep purple, rather than the usual greeny-grey. He had a habit of rubbing his fingers through his beard when anxious, and today there were times when he appeared to be grooming himself like an ape, so frequently did he rake the hair on his chin. And there was the nervous twitch. Always that twitch. Certainly, Harkness was suffering. But the untimely death of one unpopular worker would never explain the extent of his anxiety. No: his concerns were clearly much larger than any sort of petty crime or disciplinary problem on site.