When the Devil Drives (16 page)

He frowned. ‘I'm very much afraid there's been some mistake. Have you come far?'

‘From London.'

My worry must have showed in my face, because he invited us to come and sit down in the parlour. His wife was there, helping the maid clear up the remains of a modest lunch. He introduced us, invited us to sit down and sent the maid to make a fresh pot of tea.

‘Has this young man, Mr James . . . er, imposed on you in some way?'

His embarrassment showed what he suspected: Mr James had trifled with my affections and deserted me, leaving a false address.

‘I have a reputation for finding missing people,' I said. ‘Mr James came to me because an acquaintance had suggested that I might help him trace a young woman who had disappeared.'

‘And he said his family lived here?'

‘Yes. He said the young woman he was trying to find also lived here in the village. Her name was Miss Dora Tilbury.'

‘I'm sorry, the name means nothing to me.' He glanced at his wife. She shook her head.

‘According to Mr James, she lived with her uncle who was her legal guardian. He was a clergyman who'd had to resign his living because of ill health.'

‘Miss Lane, I assure you I'd have known if there were another clergyman living in the village.'

‘He said Miss Tilbury had fair hair, a pale complexion and blue eyes. She was of average height, or a little below it, with small and delicate hands and feet. Does that description fit any young woman in the village, even under another name?'

The vicar glanced at his wife again. ‘Not one of ours. I don't know if among the Methodists . . .'

Another glance at his wife. She shook her head. We drank tea and made conversation, none of it to the purpose. He asked how we were going to get back to London and offered us a ride in his pony cart as far as Chelmsford, saying that he had an errand there in any case. I guessed he'd invented the errand out of kindness, still thinking that Mr James' perfidy was a serious blow to me, which it was, but not in the way he suspected. I accepted gratefully, but asked if he could kindly pick us up at the Cock, because I wanted another talk with the landlord. As we walked, there was a coldness in my head that had nothing to do with the wind at our backs. I was nearly sure what we'd hear from the landlord, and as it turned out, I was right.

‘Yes, I see the coach come in every morning,' he said, polishing beer tankards in the snug. ‘I have to, in case there's anybody getting off here, not that there often is.'

‘What about people getting on here to go to London?' I asked.

‘Once in a blue moon. We don't get many people travelling from round here.'

‘A Thursday morning, second Thursday of this month it would have been, did a young woman in a blue cloak get on the coach for London?'

He gave me a sideways look. ‘Nobody's got on the London coach from here since the first week in September, and that was the doctor taking his son up to school.'

The vicar's pony cart arrived outside. I thanked the landlord and we left.

Tabby and I had no chance to talk until we managed to get inside seats next to each other on the last stage into London. It was late evening by then.

‘The stage coach driver reckoned he saw her getting on and getting off,' Tabby said.

‘He was lying. I wasn't sure I believed him at the time. He'd been bribed to say that if anybody inquired. The question is, who bribed him?'

‘Mr James,' Tabby said promptly.

‘Probably. But why?'

She had no answer to that and neither did I, only more questions.

‘Is he even called Jeremy James?' I said. ‘Could that be as false as his home address?'

‘The man out at Islington knew him, you said.'

‘Knew the name and not much else. Our man could have paid simply to use his address for forwarding mail.'

‘We thought there was something off-colour about him from the start,' Tabby said.

‘That's flattering us, I think. We thought it odd that he didn't seem to know very much beyond the obvious about Miss Tilbury, but put that down to being absorbed in himself.'

‘So was any of it true?' Tabby said.

‘As far as I can see, almost nothing.'

Tabby waited for a while in case I came up with something more encouraging, then leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. I stared out at the darkness, patched occasionally by the gleam of a lamp or candle in a cottage window, and thought of nothing – that is to say, the nothing that had been Dora Tilbury. The home at Boreham, the elderly guardian and his strict housekeeper, the quiet life with her embroidery and pet linnet, had all vanished like smoke into the wind, or even less than smoke because they'd never existed. She'd never got up early, put on her blue cloak and climbed into a stage coach. The other Miss Tilbury of my own imagining, who'd stepped out of that coach to find a different sweetheart waiting for her in the inn yard, was less than the shadow of a shadow. Both Dora Tilburys had existed only in a story told by a young man whose name was probably false and place of residence certainly so. Cinderella and Scheherazade were no more of a fiction than Dora Tilbury.

And yet, Dora Tilbury had existed enough to be dead. That was what my mind came back to time and again. I'd seen her lying there under the Achilles statue, in her scuffed black shoes and grey wool jacket, answering well enough to the description I'd been given. A very vague and general description it had been too, apart from one item: the birthmark on her left wrist. It was the only useful identification that the man who called himself Mr James had given me and the one thing that marked her out as Dora Tilbury. In my tiredness and confusion, it seemed to me that she'd been brought into existence simply to die.

The coach slowed from a trot to a walk when we encountered the traffic on the eastern outskirts of London. Tabby woke and picked up the conversation where she'd left it.

‘If he killed her, he might have wanted to make out to us he was worried about her to put everybody off the track.'

‘If she'd been found dead the day after he came to us, I'd entirely agree with you,' I said. ‘But look at the timing. He came to us on Wednesday the sixteenth. I don't think she can have been dead for very long when they found her, or the blood wouldn't have been flowing at all. She was probably killed either this Tuesday or possibly the first few hours of Wednesday morning. That would mean he knew six days ahead he was going to kill her. In any case, it would be useless as a defence in court. The prosecution could simply say that he'd been genuinely worried when he came to us, then found her and murdered her for some reason later.'

‘Because she'd gone off with another man?'

‘Except we don't know there was another man. We were trying to build a house on a quicksand.'

By the time the coach reached its depot in Aldgate it was dark. We missed the last omnibus to Piccadilly and though Tabby was in favour of walking home for the sake of economy, we were both so dog-tired that I insisted on taking a cab.

‘So what do we do now?' Tabby said.

‘The inquest on Miss Tilbury . . .' I hesitated, because she almost certainly was not Miss Tilbury. ‘The inquest should have been today. I need to know what happened.'

It had been in my mind to divert to Fleet Street on the way back and find Jimmy Cuffs, but that could wait until tomorrow's papers. I had no direct interest in the matter now and no client. But the body of the girl under that triumphing statue, with no name, no home, no history made its own claims. Besides, even if I had wanted to walk away, I'd given misleading evidence to a police officer at the scene. Even though I hadn't known it was misleading at the time, I'd have questions to answer.

I paid off the cab in Grosvenor Square. It was less complicated than trying to shout up to the box to direct the driver to the mews. The windows of the contessa's apartment were dark, curtains drawn back but not even the glimmer of one candle. It was about ten o'clock by then, so perhaps she went to bed early, though I doubted that. I wondered if Mr Clyde had already acted on my suggestion and carried her away by trickery or by force. Quite possibly I'd lost both my clients and gained nothing but a feeling of failure. I'd been too proud of my little skills and a few early successes. Perhaps I should be in Ireland after all, being introduced to a surprised family as Mr Carmichael's fiancée. I must have sighed because Tabby was looking up at me, the light from a window falling on her worried face.

‘That Mr James or whatever his name is, he's not going to be paying us any more money, is he?' she said.

‘No.'

‘Don't you worry,' she said. ‘We'll manage somehow.'

Her small ungloved hand landed briefly on mine and flew away again. I could have cried. Here was a girl who'd never had more than a few coppers to her name, mistaking the cause of my sadness and trying to console me.

‘Yes, we'll manage. Don't you worry either,' I said.

Next morning I went riding with Amos. It was a drizzly day and he was in a sombre mood. Both eyes were open now, but the bruise on his cheek was purple and yellow.

As he helped me down at the end of our ride he said he was going away for a few days.

‘Again? More horse dealing?' I said. Then I looked at his expression and knew it wasn't.

‘Amos, please don't take risks.'

He turned to remount his cob without replying. When he was in the saddle, with the cob's reins in his right hand and Rancie's in his left, he looked down at me.

‘I've got it arranged with the governor. A boy'll ride out with you whenever you like.'

Then he wheeled both horses and went, so what I tried to say to him was lost in a clattering of hooves.

Still in my riding clothes, I went to buy newspapers, choosing two that used the services of Jimmy Cuffs. Back in my room, I searched for reports of the inquest. The fact that the dead girl had been found in such a public and dramatic place should have ensured at least half a column of coverage. Eventually, after much searching, I found a small paragraph in one paper recording only that the inquest into the death of an unknown young woman whose body was found by the Achilles statue in Hyde Park on Wednesday morning had been opened and adjourned.

At midday, the earliest that Jimmy Cuffs welcomed callers, I was outside the Cheshire Cheese again. Jimmy appeared soon after a boy took in my message. He looked tired and less good-humoured than usual. I asked him if he had time to talk.

‘The Achilles inquest?'

‘Yes.'

‘Shall we walk?'

We strolled in the light drizzle along Fleet Street. It seemed only half alive at this time of day without the rushing copy boys and the thump of presses.

‘So what happened?' I said.

‘I was hoping you might tell me that.'

‘All I know is what I've read – two sentences saying it was opened and adjourned. Did you write more?'

‘There was no more to write.'

‘The coroner must have said something.'

‘He made the jury view the body as usual, then said that circumstances had arisen which made it necessary to adjourn the inquest
sine die.
When one of the jurors tried to ask a question he cut him off pretty sharply.'

‘No explanation?'

‘None. I know the coroner's officer quite well and sometimes he'll give me a hint, off record, of things that don't come out in court. Not this time. He clamped the official look on his face like a portcullis coming down and wouldn't say a word.'

We turned into Chancery Lane.

‘The report described her as an unknown young woman,' I said.

‘Inevitably, since she wasn't named at the inquest.' Jimmy Cuffs thought he was owed an explanation. I could hardly blame him.

‘I ask because I was there quite soon after the body was discovered,' I said. ‘I told the police sergeant her name: Dora Tilbury.'

‘You knew her?' He stopped so suddenly that a lad with a pile of legal papers chin-high cannoned into him and nearly knocked him over. The boy cursed him and whirled on, papers intact. I put out a hand to steady Jimmy.

‘I didn't know her exactly. I'd had her described to me by a client who wanted to find her. There was a birthmark on her wrist.'

He started walking again, firing questions at me. ‘Why weren't you called at the inquest?'

‘The sergeant had my address, but I was out of town yesterday. I'd given the sergeant the name of a man who should have been able to identify her much more positively than I could.'

‘A relative?'

‘A young man who considered himself her fiancé – or so he said.'

‘Your client?'

‘Yes.'

‘So why didn't he identify her?'

‘I don't think the coroner's officer would have found him. He'd given me a false address, out in Essex.

Jimmy Cuffs said nothing for a long time. We came to the top of Chancery Lane, turned and started walking back down towards Fleet Street.

‘What you've just told me doesn't explain what happened at the inquest,' he said at last.

‘It might. The coroner's officer probably wouldn't be allowed to move as quickly as I did.'

‘No, it still doesn't explain it,' Jimmy said stubbornly. ‘I've attended hundreds of inquests. In those circumstances, they'd have heard evidence from the sergeant you spoke to and almost certainly demanded your attendance. There should have been a police officer on your doorstep first thing yesterday morning.'