The Candle Man (22 page)

‘Then how about over there,’ he said, pointing towards a wooden gateway. It stood ajar and led into the stable yard of the small quayside warehouse. ‘We might find somewhere
sheltered. Dry, even.’

A coarse, leery voice and Polly would have been wary of his suggestion, would have stood her ground and insisted it was out here or not at all. She’d been
taken
roughly before by
drunks who thought she was doing this for fun, not money. Somewhere private was the first thing they asked for. But this one seemed, at the very least, quite polite.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the man. He took off his cap, and for the first time she had a glimpse of his face: lean and tanned, dark sideburns and dark hair, coarse and tufty. Under
different circumstances, quite an attractive man. He held his cap awkwardly, twisting it between balled fists. She could tell he was feeling uncomfortable about this.

First-timer?
Most probably a married man and this was his very first time actually paying for it. She took pity on him. He seemed harmless enough.

‘Go on then,’ she nodded towards the open gate. She reached out and grabbed one of his hands. He flinched nervously at her touch.

Polly cackled. ‘I’ll look after yer, love. Treat yer gentle!’

She led him across the road and through the open gate. Beyond, the small stable yard was big enough for only two or three carts side by side. Tonight it was empty, save for a pile of empty
canvas sacks in one corner, sodden from the rain. On the far side, padlocked double gates to the stable were overhung by a lip of several feet of roof. It was dry over there.

Polly clacked unsteadily across uneven cobbles until she rested a hand against the dry wood. She turned around to look at the man. He hovered uncertainly a yard from her. She couldn’t see
his face now; the gas lamp out on Bucks Row was behind him. He was just a silhouette.

‘Need to come a little closer, love, if you want—’

‘I was watching you earlier,’ said the man gently.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Hours earlier, back in that pub . . . The Rose and Crown.’

‘Oh?’ She laughed. It sounded forced. ‘Like what you saw, then, eh?’

He shared the laugh, insincere and cool. He didn’t sound quite so much like the nervous first-timer now. ‘Oh, yes, you’re a right beauty.’

Polly shrugged at the compliment. It was nice to hear it even if she knew it was a facile attempt at small talk. She was no beauty; that’s why her best trade tended to be at the latter end
of an evening.

‘Your name’s Polly,’ he said.

‘Aye, Polly’s the name! Everyone knows me in that pub, one way or the other,’ she said with a chuckle, a hand impatiently reaching out and tugging on his belt buckle.
‘Now then—’

‘Polly Nichols.’

She hesitated. Everyone knew her as Polly, her trade name. But they knew no more than that.

‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘I know your name. And I know something was troubling you.’

She let go of his belt. ‘I . . .’

‘Yes, something playing heavily on your mind, Polly. Your hand – the one not busy holding a cup – was telling me all sorts of things.’

‘Whatcha talkin’ ’bout?’

‘Your hand. It kept fumbling for something around your neck. A nice necklace, perhaps? A piece of jewellery? I saw your fingers stealing beneath your neck cloth, feeling under folds of
flannel. Something right there,’ he said, pressing a finger against the subtle bulge at the base of her throat beneath the collar of her jacket.

‘I . . . I ain’t got nothing in there that’s any yer business, love.’

‘Oh, but you do have something, Polly; something very important to us. You know that, don’t you?’

Her jaw shuddered with that word. ‘Us?’

Babbitt grinned. ‘Yes.’

She took a step back from him, reversing into the stable’s wooden-slat wall. ‘Oh dear god . . .’

He rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘We need to have a little talk, my dear.’

Her jaw trembled, wobbled up and down, showing him a mouth full of missing teeth. ‘Oh god! P . . . p . . . please don’t ’urt me!’

He shushed her with a finger placed lightly against her lips. ‘Now, I know you helped a certain William H Tolly with a job some weeks ago, didn’t you?’

She stared at him, wide-eyed and frozen.

‘I know, Polly. I know, because William, or shall I say “ol’ Bill”, told me all about you. So shall we take it that there’s really no point your trying to pretend
you don’t know what I’m talking about?’

She managed a quick jerk of her head.

‘Bill told me you found something on that French woman. A very nice gold locket; the sort of gift a foolish man besotted with a beautiful woman might give. And inside this locket there was
something else.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘You know, don’t you? Why don’t you tell me?’

‘P-picture. A . . . p-photograph.’

‘That’s right. Well done, Polly.’

‘The . . . the woman . . . and the m . . . man. They . . . were lovers . . .’

He smiled. ‘Good girl. You keep this up, keep being this helpful to me, and I promise I’m going to let you go.’ He patted her shoulder affectionately. ‘And I might even
give you a couple of shillings for your troubles.’

She swallowed anxiously. ‘The man in the picture. I . . . I . . . seen ’is face again.’

Babbitt cocked a brow. ‘Really?’

Her head nodded vigorously. ‘’Is . . . face . . . in a newspaper. Handsome . . . young man.’

‘And do you know
who
he is, Polly?’

She shook her head. ‘No . . . no. But . . . but, I . . . I think . . . I . . . ’E could be in the guvver-ment or summin’?’

Government
. Babbitt gave that a moment’s consideration. It would certainly make sense with the amount of money these gentlemen were prepared to pay him to fix this mess of
theirs.

‘Can you tell me
which
newspaper you saw his face in?’

Her face flickered with effort, her eyes darting up to one side in a desperate attempt to haul something useful out of her head. ‘No . . . I . . . I . . . don’t remember . .
.’

‘Not to worry. Now Polly, my dear; why don’t you pull out that nice bit of jewellery and give it to me?’

With trembling fingers, she delved under her frock and lifted the chain and locket out over her collar. Fumbling, she tried to lift it over her head but the chain caught on her hair, on her
bonnet.

‘Here, allow me,’ he offered solicitously. He reached around her head, almost like a tender embrace, and undid the chain’s clasp behind her neck. ‘There,’ he said
softly.

‘Picture ain’t in there n-no more,’ said Polly quickly.

‘Oh?’

He held the locket in his hand, warm from her body-heat, the size of a large flattened walnut. He fiddled with its clasp until it opened. As she said. Just an empty frame and a pink velvet
inlay.

‘Where is it?’

Polly’s lips were quivering, reluctant to blurt out any more. Babbitt sighed. He reached into a pocket inside his jacket and pulled out his long, slender knife. Its blade glinted, a faint
shard reflecting the pallid orange light from the lamp on the street outside. Her eyes instantly widened and she began to moan.

‘Ah yes, it’s not a pleasant sight, is it, hmmm?’

She swallowed and shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Frightened?’

She nodded.

‘Yes, you jolly well should be. See, it’s this very blade I used to gut your friend Bill.’

‘Oh . . . g-god . . . oh . . . n-no!’ Her deep moan became a mewling whimper, thick with mucous and horror.

‘Now then, that picture; where might I find it, my dear?’

She sniffled something through the snot and tears.

‘Again please.’

‘A-Annie.’

Babbitt cocked his brow. ‘Would this be another helper Bill had on this job?’

‘She . . . she . . . was the one did the baby. I gave it ’er . . . this . . . this evenin’. The picture . . . I g-gave it her earlier.’

He let the tip of his blade flick back and forth in the small space between their faces. ‘Annie who? I’d really like her full name.’

‘Chapman! Annie Chapman!’

‘Chapman, is it?’ He smiled, charming and wide. ‘Thank you, Polly. And do you have an address for me?’

‘’Onest . . . I d-don’t,’ she replied, her eyes on the serrated side of the blade. ‘Sh-she moved in wiv a man last week. I think . . . b-but I d-don’t know .
. . ’Onest I d-don’t . . .’

He could well believe that. Her type were all no fixed abode. Flop houses, workhouses and lodgings, from one to the next, to the bed of any man who promised to look after them.

‘Annie’s like you and Bill though, isn’t she? She has her favourite public houses?’

Polly nodded, lips pressed together as if that last morsel of information was going to need to be prised out of her.

‘I promised you some shillings, didn’t I? The same goes for Annie. I don’t want to hurt either of you. I’m just getting back what shouldn’t have been taken in the
first place.’

‘Was it r-r-really y-you . . . that k-killed Bill?’

He sighed. ‘Yes, I did. But then, between you and I, I don’t think he was a very nice man, was he?’

She shook her head. He could see a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

Good
. There was no need to make her any more frightened than she was. And hope . . . Hope was a good thing to be grasping hold of in the last few moments of life.

‘The . . . the Swan . . .’

The Swan
. He’d done his research. He knew of the public house. Not so very far from here, as it happened. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve been immensely
helpful.’ He reached down for one of her cold hands and cupped it in his. ‘Don’t look so worried. Here.’ He pressed a couple of shillings into her hand. ‘This is for
your time.’

She looked down and caught the dull glint of coins in her palm. Her eyes lit up, a mixture of overwhelming relief and joy.

‘Thank you!’ She gazed wide-eyed at the money in her hand. ‘Thank you! I—’

His knife was suddenly buried in her neck up to the hilt; with a quick jerk, he wrenched it forward, opening her throat in a jagged gash from beneath her left ear, almost all the way round to
the other. She looked up from her coins, still trying to work out what had just happened. Then blood tumbled and spattered onto the stones between them. She shuddered in his grasp, eyes wide and
rolling.

‘Shhhh,’ he whispered softly, holding her head back to open the wound and ease the flow. ‘Like this. Be very still. It’s better, much quicker this way.’

She tried to gurgle something. Her boots scraping and slapping against the bottom of the stable wall.

‘There’s a good girl,’ he whispered into her ear. He kissed her cheek tenderly. ‘You can sleep soon enough, my dear. Soon enough.’

Her struggling, shuffling, began to wane. ‘This really isn’t your mortal life, Polly. Don’t you see? This world around us . . . it’s purgatory.’ Her legs flexed
beneath her and all of a sudden she was a dead weight in his arms. Gently, he lowered her to the ground.

For a few moments he studied her still body, growing damp beneath the heavy patter of rain, the blood that had begun to pool beneath her neck washed away by a miniature stream of rainwater that
snaked towards a gutter and sewage drain across the small courtyard.

He would have liked a candle to hand, to light, to watch the flickering flame for a few moments. Instead, he struck a match and gazed at the glow for a moment before extinguishing it with his
fingers.

‘And now, my dear, you’re free to go . . . whichever way you must go.’

A clock chimed the quarter hour. It was 2.45 in the morning. He stirred from his reverie. There were tradesmen that would be getting up within the hour.

He crouched down over her body.

Make it look the work of madman . . . not a hired man.

He stabbed at her abdomen several times; hard, ruthless thrusts that were deliberately uncontrolled, artless and vicious.

A
rgyll was standing in the hallway, staring at the front door, working up the courage to open it and step outside.

‘Come on, John,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It’s just a little walk. You can do that at least, can’t you?’

This morning, after finishing his breakfast and reading his paper, he decided to set himself a challenge. To do something for himself instead of relying quite so much on Mary to nurse him. He
was beginning to wonder whether the poor young girl might be having second thoughts about the commitment she’d taken on. He certainly couldn’t blame her if she was entertaining the
notion of leaving him. Caring for a man so many years her senior, a shuffling invalid no less, with an empty vessel of a mind and nothing noteworthy to say for himself. He wouldn’t wish that
on anyone.

In truth, he was sure a beauty like her could be stepping out with any young man she chose. A wonderful girl like her, so vivacious, so charming, a wholesome quality that made her fresh freckled
face look out of place amongst all the other sallow, sickly faces of London. But she appeared to be prepared to stay by his side, for whatever it was that she saw in him. The thought made him feel
guilty. And frightened – terrified – of losing her.