The Candle Man (24 page)

Foolish. Stupid. She could have been tucked up in the relative safety of the lodging house she’s been using this last week. She’d bloody well paid for tonight with the last of her
money, but then she’d had a fight with that bitch, Eliza, in the next room earlier this evening. A stupid fight that had flared up in mere seconds down in the washroom. A fight over a bloody
bar of soap, would you believe.

Annie was inclined to agree the incident had been more her fault than Eliza’s, not that she’d admitted as much. So Annie borrowed her bar of soap and lost it and then Eliza had
started accusing her of trying to steal it. Well, she’d lost control of herself and fists flew. The others there were unanimous in saying that Annie had thrown the first punch.

Possibly they were right. Annie wasn’t herself. Was very much out of sorts. In truth, she was a jangling skin of sharp-ended nerves. Ever since she’d heard the news that Polly
Nichols had been knifed up. Quite horribly, if the Chinese whispers were to be trusted.

She was dead. That much was true. And then the morning after Annie had heard that news, one of the men in the lodgings, who bought the occasional paper, had spotted a small notice in the local
reports. Just a couple of paragraphs.

Just another unlucky tart.

Polly was right, that’s what Annie realised now. Certain of it. ‘They’, whoever the hell ‘they’ were, were going to come for her next. Absently, she fingered her
bag. All that she owned was in there: a comb, a nice piece of muslin, some cheap brass rings that her last man had bought her (just a few days before he’d kicked her out for another, younger,
tart) and, of course, kept safe in an envelope she’d found in the lodging house – that picture.

It’s what they want, ain’t it?

She felt like the small, oval-shaped photograph of the young gentleman and that pretty French woman holding the baby was like a fox’s scent, drawing the hunting dogs. She was tempted to
just tear it into little pieces and toss it away. In fact, several times she nearly had. But then that would do no good. Them hunting dogs would still come for her, photograph or not. She had to
keep it with her for now. Keep it because, perhaps, somehow, she might be able to use it to bargain for her life.

Or . . . the other alternative. Take it to one of the newspapers, just like Polly had suggested she do the last time she saw her. Take it to one of them and, of course, ask for money. They were
clever men who worked for the papers. They’d know exactly who the gentleman in the picture was. Oh, yes . . . there’d be some money for her. But the trick would be explaining how she
had the picture. The trick would be in knowing how much to say. Certainly nothing about how she had played her part in making sure the pretty woman and the young baby were no more.

And if they did pay her some money – and not summon a constable to arrest her immediately for infanticide – it wasn’t going to be anything like the king’s ransom Bill had
assured them they were going to get. But at least it would be something. But more to the point, if the story of this man’s indiscretion, and the picture to prove it, were in the press, then
surely there was no point in setting the hunting dogs on her anymore. Right?

The man.

Oh, good god, the man. She thought she had an idea who it was now. Not a hundred percent certain, but it looked so very much like him. Images of him, both photographs and ‘artists
impressions’, had been in a paper only this morning; an official visit he’d made to some cavalry barracks in Yorkshire. There he was, shaking hands, greeting young cavalry officers. The
look of a carefree man whose troubles have all been taken care of for him.

The two girls further down Hanbury Street stepped out of the pall of light from the gas lamp and crossed the road together. Annie’s heart sank. Even though neither of them knew she was
perched in the darkness up this end, they had felt like company. She watched them cross the narrow street from one pool of dim amber light to the one on the far side, their boot heels clacking and
scraping as they passed beneath it and then finally disappeared from view down a rat-run between two rows of terraced houses.

All alone, Annie.

She wished she’d had just enough money to drink herself unconscious this evening, rather than tremble the night away. At least unconscious, if the shiv men found her, she’d take the
blade in her sleep; not even know it had happened to her.

God help me.

Just tonight. Just the few hours left of tonight. That’s all she had to get through. She nodded. The gesture heartened her, firmed her resolve. Yes, tomorrow, that’s exactly what she
was going to do: take it to the first newspaper building she came across on Fleet Street and then, money or no money, she was going to be done with this. Let them worry about what to do with that
portrait of a man and woman in love; a small picture of Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Albert, with his French tart.

It takes patience. An immense amount of patience to do this sort of thing properly. Even so, Babbitt was beginning to wonder whether those two wretched tarts were ever going to
move along. Whether, in fact, they were just going to stay rooted beneath that gas lamp until it was finally put out by the lamplighter and the morning was about its business.

He watched them leave and then returned his gaze to the low wall opposite. He knew Annie Chapman was sitting right there, utterly convinced she was invisible in the night. But he could just
about see the faint, ghostly outline of her white bonnet bobbing in the dark.

The woman appeared to have no idea she’d been watched all evening. He’d picked up on her at just gone eight when she’d wandered into the Swan, asking around for favours,
offering herself more cheaply than she would have normally on account of the bruises and scratches on her face. But all poor Annie had received were shaking heads, and the all too predictable
grunted, single-syllable abuse from those shaved and clothed monkeys.

Savages, animals, these people.

What was it his tutor had once told him? A long time ago now, back in better times, the innocent time of childhood. Back before his family undertook their doomed trek across God’s
wilderness. Before the Indians. Before that shaman had showed him his calling.

What was it his tutor said?

‘It is the capacity for acts of genuine kindness that separates humans from the animals.’

He remembered that insight so well, even being so young. Remembered looking at the world slightly differently thereafter and categorising people he met as either animals or humans based on their
capacity for altruism.

He remembered a hectic summer, full of packing and preparations. 1858. His father had decided fantastic business opportunities awaited him on the far side of America, even though his various
businesses were doing a healthy trade in New York. It was a place called Oregon that he was certain would make him rich. So the whole family was going, with just their dearest heirlooms. Everything
else was for sale.

That summer, only nine, he’d been a silent observer, judge and juror for the procession of people who entered his parents’ parlour to wish them
bon voyage
, or enquire about a
business detail. He’d silently judged them on the simplest, most casual gestures. A tradesman who might enter the house, see him standing in the foyer and offer him a friendly wink before
going to talk to his father –
human
. An opportunistic salesman looking to take advantage of his father’s distracted mind and sell him snake oil and other worthless medicines for
the journey ahead –
animal
.

He still played that game from time to time. Watching people and how they treated each other. But the game always seemed to produce the same results. Animal after animal after animal.

The humans were all long gone. All animals now.

He sighed, straightened his stiff legs as he stood up and began to slowly cross Hanbury Street.

A
nnie thought she heard the light tapping of shoe soles across the street.

‘Hello?’ She got up off the low wall. ‘Hello? Someone there?’

Then it was gone. She chided herself for being so silly and jumpy. If it was anything, it was a fox. Those animals practically owned the streets once humankind had gone to bed. She slowly sat
down again on the wall, praying for the last few hours of dark to hurry up and end. The faint peel of a bell chimed the hour: it was four in the morning. Another hour and the first workers would be
getting up, making the street a safer place for her once more. And half an hour after that, the sky would be a pallid grey, and even here in White-chapel, one or two foolhardy birds would have some
desultory tune they wanted to sing.

Annie was feeling hopeful about today. Just a few more hours and then she was going to make her way west, towards the City and Fleet Street. And who knows? Perhaps she was going to be enjoying a
hearty breakfast of sausages and bacon, with money in her bag for the story and the picture.

She heard the soft brushing of movement – cloth swishing against cloth.

Right behind her.

She’d just started to turn around when she felt a hand roughly mash her lips against her teeth, her nose pinched firmly, someone pulling her back off the low wall. She landed on her back
in a small yard, looking up at a very dark sky. She tried screaming into the palm, hoping in the stillness of the night that the other two girls might still just about hear her cry. But the best
she could muster was a muffled whimper.

‘Best to be quiet now, Annie Chapman.’ A gentle whisper from above. ‘I don’t wish to use the knife, but I shall if I need to.’

She felt something sharp probing her left ear and recoiled from it. ‘Be still now. That’s the tip of my blade in your ear. One little push and it’ll be through your eardrum as
if it were a pie crust and into your brain in no time.’

She stilled herself immediately.

‘I’m going to remove my hand and you and I are going to talk. If you’re a good, helpful girl, Annie, you’re going to walk away with some money in your pocket. If
you’re not . . .’ There really was no need to finish that.

She nodded.

Babbitt lifted his hand off her lips. ‘Annie, dear Annie. Things are not so good for you, are they? You should be tucked up in a bed at this hour of the morning.’

‘G-got no money.’

‘Hmmm, I suspected that. No business for you this evening?’

Her mouth opened; she wanted to say something.

‘Go on, what is it?’

‘Are y-you . . . are you . . . ?’

‘Am I the one who killed Bill? Polly?’

No point lying to her
. She’d guess. More importantly, he needed to earn a little of her trust right now; he needed to give her a toe-hold of hope. Sense the possibility that
co-operation with him was a way out for her.

‘I won’t lie to you, Annie. Yes, regretfully that was me. They weren’t as helpful as I’m hoping you’re going to be.’

‘You . . . you want that l-locket b-back?’

He shrugged and smiled, not that she could see his lips in the gloom, but she could hear it in his voice. ‘Oh, I have that already. Lovely little piece, isn’t it? I had a goldsmith
look at it. Very nice piece. No, it’s not that I’m after, Annie.’

‘The p-picture . . . the picture inside! I got it! I got it right on me!’

She seemed so very keen to talk. The blade tickling her ear lobe was helping, of course.

‘In me bag!’ she gasped. ‘R-right ’ere in m-me bag!’

He looked down at the threadbare floral printed bag on the muddy ground beside her in the small yard. He reached for it and tipped it out beside her head. ‘My dear, I presume these are all
your worldly possessions?’

She nodded.

‘Not really very much to show for a lifetime on this earth, is it?’ he asked as his fingers picked through the meagre offering of personal effects scattered beside her.

‘I ’ad me own ’ome once,’ she replied.

Babbitt smiled at her distractedly. ‘Really?’ The poor woman was showing some spirit, some shrewdness, talking to him like that. Trying to build a relationship with him in the few
moments she had left.

Clever girl.

‘I ’ad an ’usband, an’ me b-babies, an ’ome, n-nice things an’ all,’ she continued.

‘But somewhere it all went wrong, did it, Annie? Hmmm?’

‘Me daughter d-died an’ . . . an’ me an’ ’im split . . . an’—’

‘And you took to drink, and then, finally, whoring, to pay for the drink?’

‘Y-yes.’

He sighed. ‘It’s a horrible world, isn’t it, Annie?’ he replied as his fingers found a folded envelope. It rustled as he probed hopefully inside. ‘Ahhhh . . . now
this
feels promising.’

‘I . . . I kept it s-safe.’ She swallowed anxiously. ‘The m-man in the picture . . . I think it’s—’

‘Someone very important?’

She nodded quickly.

‘Of course it is. That’s why they’ve paid for someone like me to come and find it. Can’t have “the great and the good” looking as fallible and immoral as the
rest of us lowly peasants now, can we?’ From inside his dark coat he pulled out a small candle and set it carefully on the ground. ‘That’s supposedly what sets them apart from us
lot; the
riff-raff
. Why they have the nice things, the privileges. Because they’re meant to be a cut above common folk.’