The Candle Man (38 page)

He kissed the pink rim of her ear and whispered, ‘I’m John Argyll now.’

She closed her eyes and turned her cheek towards his hand, savouring his touch.

You, Mary Kelly, saved me from becoming who I was.

T
he hansom dropped them outside the archway at the front of Euston Station on Drummond Street, thick with other carriages and cabs picking up and
dropping off. Warrington glanced at his timepiece: it was just gone half-past-eight. Hain told them along the way that the London and North Western Rail usually had a final train of the day leaving
at nine in the evening for Liverpool.

This Candle Man – Mr Babbitt was his alias, presumably – might well have managed to catch the early afternoon train if he’d been very lucky, but it was unlikely. Equally,
though, he might not even be heading for Liverpool. There were suppositions ladled on top of suppositions to think they might actually find him here. There were other ports of departure.

He grasped the tall tart’s arm and raced her across a pavement littered with an archipelago of suitcases and travel trunks. ‘Come along! Let’s see if we can find your friend
Mary.’

Passing through the huge Doric archway of the entrance and the congested vestibule beyond, they were in the Great Hall: three stories of cavernous interior lined with classical Roman columns
that stretched all the way up to the coffered ceiling sixty feet above them. At one end was a theatrically grand stairway that led up to a gallery one storey up, which ran all the way around the
hall. Hain and Robson followed closely behind them.

All four of them scanned the busy hall.

‘We’ll not see much from down here, sir,’ said Robson. He nodded up at the gallery. Warrington followed his gaze.

‘Good idea. I’ll take her up there with me and you two stay down here on the floor. If she spots them, she can point them out to you.’

‘What if they’re already on the train, sir?’ He gestured towards the departure platform stretching out beneath the station’s long skylight roof, laced with arches of
wrought iron. Candelabras of large electric light bulbs descended to bathe the platform with a warm, steady glow. An engine huffed impatiently, billowing a column of steam. It was still twenty-five
minutes until the train for Liverpool was due to leave.

‘They don’t open the platform until fifteen minutes before,’ said Hain. Warrington had a feeling the man was right. There was only one departure platform and the luggage
porters needed the platform space to unload and load luggage. If Babbitt and the girl were planning on getting that train, then they were surely in here, in the Great Hall, somewhere.

‘Watch for me closely,’ said Warrington. ‘If we see him, I don’t want to have to be waving my arms around like a lunatic to attract your attention.’ Then he turned
and led the way towards the stairs to the gallery, Liz staying close by his side, her eyes anxiously darting from face to face in the crowd.

At the top of the second flight of white marble steps, they turned to rest on the gallery’s mahogany elbow rail and look down on the Great Hall’s floor. Warrington promptly looped
his arm through hers and took a step closer so that their hips bumped gently together.

‘Hoy! What you think you’re doin’?’ said Liz.

‘We should try not to look too conspicuous, don’t you think? Sweethearts embarking on a holiday together; that’s what we shall pretend to be.’ He wasn’t sure anyone
walking past them on the gallery would be convinced that they were lovers or betrothed, but from afar, from the floor below, huddled close together like a couple gazing down would be better than
them appearing like two watchful prison officers suspiciously scanning an exercise yard.

‘Just look for her, will you?’ Warrington ordered.

Liz turned to study the milling knots of people against the geometric designs on the marble floor. A confusing kaleidoscope of pattern and movement, a thousand pale ovals of flesh beneath
bonnets and hats, smiling, talking, laughing, scowling . . . and just one of them, in amongst them somewhere, was Mary. She didn’t even have any idea what Mary might be wearing today; her
clothes were all new, not the familiar old gone-to-rags she used to wear.

Come on, love . . . Where are you?

Argyll looked at the large clock on the wall at the end of the main hall. ‘Not long. The porter said we’ll be able to board in just five minutes.’

Mary nodded absently, holding onto his arm and watching the goings-on around her.

They were standing in the middle of the floor now. Instinctively he felt more comfortable here, where the press of people was the greatest, than seated on one of the benches around the side.

For the first time since abandoning the womb-like sanctuary of that house on Holland Park Avenue, he had a few moments to evaluate his situation. He thought he’d been too hasty and
skittish, dragging the poor girl away like this with nothing to call her own but whatever she’d managed to cram into the small bag she was holding. But seeing those two men taking the steps
up to their home, as they’d passed on the avenue, he realised then that his instinct to flee had been right.

See? You need me
. The unwelcome snort, the rasping voice of Mr Babbitt, the scrape of his restless trotters.

Argyll clenched his teeth, silently bidding the creature to go back into his corner and shut up. The truth was though, he needed the intuition, he needed the finely-honed instinct of his old
self: Mr Babbitt and a hundred other aliases. John Argyll needed them, for the moment. Needed them until he was safe aboard a ship bound for New York. Perhaps then, when the shore of Great Britain
was no more than a pencil line on the grey Atlantic horizon, perhaps then that snorting voice could be forcefully retired, banished forever, and he could be properly reborn as Mr John Argyll.

A pleasant dream. He squeezed Mary’s arm against his side and she squeezed back in silent complicity.
Mr Argyll and Miss Kelly take on the New World.

Not just a rebirth but perhaps the start of a wonderful adventure for the pair of them. With a bag full of money and the quick-witted street-smarts Mary clearly had, there was a world of
opportunity awaiting them. The far side of the continent, the new state of California, train lines linking the east to the west, émigrés from the world over flooding to this promised
land . . . A couple like Mr Argyll and Miss Kelly, with a bag of money, could make their fortunes.

He smiled.

Liz shook her head. ‘It’s too difficult. People are all movin’ about.’

‘Just keep your eyes peeled,’ said Warrington. ‘Her life depends on you.’ He looked at her. ‘You don’t want her ending up like those other poor women, do
you?’

Liz’s mind filled with the recollection of their gruesome find this morning; that rotting organ in a jam jar, spilling its foul contents across the writing desk. She shook her head. Not
poor young Mary.

‘I don’t know what she’s wearin’ . . .’

‘But she’s a good friend, isn’t she? You know her face? If you see her down there, you’ll recognise her, whatever she has on. Just keep looking.’

Warrington caught sight of his two men standing at the side of the hall, looking intently up at him; looking too damned obviously at him.

Bloody clods. Can they not be more subtle?!

He was about to mutter something under his breath about the clumpy practical boots men who used to be in the army were in the habit of wearing; how ex-army men had an all too obvious way they
stood, arms behind their backs, legs planted sturdily apart. They stood out like a pair of sore thumbs. But then he felt Liz’s arm tense against his own.

‘There!’ she whispered, pointing into the crowd.

‘Don’t fucking point, you silly bitch!’ he hissed back.

She dropped her hand back to the railing. ‘Sorry.’

Warrington looked at where she had pointed. And despite having no idea at all what Mary Kelly looked like, he was certain the small-framed girl, with frizzy strawberry-blonde hair tied up in a
bun, was her. Looping her arm was a tall, slender man with dark features and deep-set eyes that seemed lost beneath thick brows.

His stomach lurched, making him feel momentarily queasy.

My god, that’s him.

The hair on the back of Argyll’s neck prickled. He
knew
, he simply knew, that the woman up on the gallery had just pointed them out. A second quick glance and he
recognised her as the woman who had come to speak to Mary earlier today. And the man standing next to her was . . .

George!

A snort and a dry cackle from inside.
Yes, the silly fool who tried to betray us.

He watched George trying to nod, to point towards them subtly. Which meant he was trying to point them out to someone else; someone down here on the floor of the Great Hall with them.

Argyll turned casually, as if to catch a glance of the hall’s large clock. He spotted two men across the way, standing beside one of the columns, their heads both tilted up towards the
gallery; as conspicuous as a pair of ink spots on a freshly laundered bed sheet.

You need me still,
the pig rasped.
You still need me, ‘John’.

The two men by the column with their plain clothes, their stiff posture, screamed ‘police’ at him. They were looking his way, heads bobbing from side to side to get a better look
through the milling crowd.

Be relaxed.
The pig was right; the only card he could play right now was to make it appear that he was utterly oblivious to their presence. To give them a false sense of security.
He’d let them think they had the drop on him. He casually wrapped an arm around Mary and pulled her close to him. He nuzzled her hair affectionately.

Very well done, John. But you have to move. You have to move now!

‘I need to leave you for a moment,’ he said. ‘Stay here.’

She looked up at him, concern written on her face. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘The gentlemen’s cloakroom.’ He smiled. ‘I shan’t be long.’

‘Oh.’ She smiled back. ‘Right.’

Argyll weaved his way through the crowd. It was beginning to thicken before the chained entrance to the departure platform, passengers eager to board. Ahead of him, between two columns, were
double doors of dark wood and a brass plaque indicating the cloakroom. Above it hung flower baskets that spilled over with bright purple and white pansies.

Hain watched him go. ‘I’ll follow ’im. You keep an eye on the tart.’

‘Right-o,’ said Robson.

Hain squeezed through the crowd, cursing as he tripped over a low travel trunk some fool had decided to deposit amid the press of bodies. He rubbed his barked shin as he desperately tried to
re-acquire visual contact with the man. It wasn’t too hard. This Babbitt fellow was tall enough not to lose easily. There he was now, approaching the public lavvies.

So he just needs a piss, is all? He smiled. Human after all, then.

Hain glanced up at the gallery and saw Warrington looking down at him, overseeing proceedings. What was that? The man nodded? He wasn’t sure. Yes, there it was: another very affirmative
nod. He wasn’t sure what that meant. Follow him? Wait for him outside? Take him?

He nodded back, not entirely sure now what instruction he was confirming. His hand discreetly fumbled into his jacket pocket for the reassuring grip of his gun.

Argyll walked over to the public conveniences and nodded politely at the cloakroom attendant standing just outside the double doors. The attendant pushed the doors open for him
and Argyll stepped inside. Frosted windows and several bulbs in ornate wire-frame cages provided a steady but dim light. The Great Hall’s marbled floor had given way to black and white
chequered tiles. Along the left wall was a row of porcelain urinals. Opposite was a row of spotless hand bowls, each with its own oval mirror above it, rimmed with highly-polished brass.

At the far end of the cloakroom, a row of a dozen private water closets, each with a deliberately thick oak door to mute the noises and spare the blushes of an occupier. The cloakroom was busy
with four other gentlemen. He heard a muted whistle coming from out in the Great Hall and the others all suddenly hurried to finish their business. The departure platform must have just opened. He
could hear a wave of voices raised in unison: ‘Ahhh’s and ‘about-bleedin-time’s, and a sound like tumbling shingle on a wave-swept beach as several hundred pairs of feet
began shuffling impatiently forward through the unchained barrier and onto the platform.

Argyll found himself alone but knew that it wasn’t going to be for very long. He crossed the tiled floor, picked one of the private water closets and turned the brass handle. The heavy
door clicked open and he stepped inside, pulling it to almost fully behind him.

Oh, yes . . . One of them’s coming. Be patient.

He was right. There, through the crack in the door, he could see one of those two men, most probably civilian-clothed policemen.

You must be so very careful, John . . . He will have a gun.