Stone's Fall (19 page)

“These, eh?”

“What?” I turned, to see a grim man staring at me as though I had just advocated the abolition of taxes for landowners. Powerful, intelligent, his eyes radiating annoyance at his feeble grasp of language.

He waved his arm. “Chairs. They must organise.” He spoke with such a thick and indeterminate accent that it was difficult to realise his understanding of English grammar was rudimentary, as it was almost impossible to make out anything at all.

“What?” I repeated, almost panicking.

He picked up a chair, put it into my hand and propelled me roughly across the room until it was next to the one in a line, and made me put it down. Then he gestured to all the other chairs.

“Again.”

“Ah. Right.” He was not the sort of man who would brook any refusal. I half-expected him to whip out a revolver and shoot me on the spot if I so much as looked reluctant. So I picked up another chair, and then another, and slowly set them out, row by row.

“Good. Very good.” A thunderous clap on the back and a broad smile signified my labours for the common good had met with approval. “Drink.”

He thrust a bottle of beer at me, contrary to the 1892 Regulation of Drink Act, and scowled, or maybe it was a smile. Hard to tell. I smiled back, as best I could. I really didn’t want a drink, but again I felt it unwise to refuse. We toasted each other, smiled again, indulged in another bout of backslapping, and then he drifted off.

“And you will be Comrade Matthew, the journalist friend of Comrade Stefan,” came a cold female voice behind me. It spoke with a heavy German accent, but was both grammatical and comprehensible.

I spun round. I opened my mouth to speak. Suave and sophisticated, able to deal with any eventuality. That was the way I wanted to be, and very definitely the way I wasn’t. I couldn’t say a word.

“Are you here to hear the speech? It is not often we get journalists here, so I imagine you are here to see Comrade Peter.” She spoke quietly, and was one of those who did not look at the person she was speaking to. Stared hard, rather, somewhere above my left shoulder, communicating a contempt which fully matched the harshness of her voice.

“Um.”

“Get a good seat. He mumbles.”

She tossed back her head, and swept a strand of loose hair from her eyes with one finger. I had watched her intensely; had memorised her every gesture, and that was something she did not do. It was as though she had taken on a different persona entirely. Almost as though she was a different person. I felt utterly confused. Surely it could not be so.

She was dressed in the manner of everyone else in the room; thin, old clothes, utterly unbecoming, with thick black boots. Buttoned up to the neck with a row of buttons, one of which was undone, one missing. Her face was severe and more serious, it looked as though it had been angry often. Her skin was pallid, old-looking. Weary. The smile had no warmth in it at all.

No, I decided.

“And you are?”

“Call me Jenny,” she said flatly.

“Is it your real name?”

“What does that matter? With women names are ownership. Who your father was, who your husband is. We must choose our own names, you agree?”

“Absolutely. Just what I was thinking myself.”

“I do not approve of frivolity.”

“Sorry. Habit.”

“Divest yourself of this habit.” She had pronounced. She had finished. “You will find the meeting instructive if you pay proper attention.”

She almost clicked her heels together, I swear, and then, very briefly, for a fraction of a fraction of a second as she turned away, I caught her eye. Grey. And I got that familiar shock, running through my system; the curdling feeling in my stomach, the outpouring of breath, the sudden speeding up of my heart.

Stefan or no Stefan, and despite the undoubted appeal of a many-houred talk from a Russian anarchist, I decided to leave and quickly. At least I managed not to run, but I made my way to the door, through the groups of people coming in the opposite direction, as quickly as I could. Josef stopped me just as I was about to regain my freedom. “You are surely not leaving?”

“I must, I’m afraid, I…” I tried, but failed to think of some good reason. “I’ve just remembered some work I have to do. Dreadfully sorry. Really looking forward to it.”

“Another time, then,” he said with no great interest. “As you see the doors are always open. Even to journalists.”

“Thank you. That is kind, and I have found even the little I’ve seen interesting. Very interesting. Tell me, who is that woman over there?”

I nodded as discreetly as I could.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Oh, we talked, you see. And there are so few women here, I wondered.”

“If you want to find out, you should ask her yourself. Besides, I don’t know a great deal about her. She’s been coming occasionally for the last six months or so. It was the first thing she did when she got off the boat.”

“The boat?”

“Yes. She is German; had to leave because… well, that doesn’t matter. But she’s tough and committed. If you want to know more, ask her. But don’t expect an answer.”

I didn’t want to push the matter too far. So I left, grateful only that Hozwicki hadn’t shown up. The last thing I needed was to have to come up with another excuse.

Kropotkin arrived only about ten minutes after I left; I saw him from my vantage point across the road. It was part of the training; part of the way I had trained myself, at any rate. The ability to wait. It is a skill possessed by very few people. Most get bored after only a few minutes, they become agitated and dream up dozens of good reasons why they are wasting their time, simply to justify giving up. I had learned, not exactly to like it, but more to let my mind drift, so that time seemed to pass more quickly. It had a peaceful aspect to it. It is a small talent, I know, but it is rare and one I am quite proud of. So I found a dark corner, in an alleyway running along the side of a grocer’s shop on the other side of the road, which gave a clear view but which wasn’t lit up by the gaslight. I pulled my coat more firmly around my neck. And I waited. And waited. I saw Stefan hurry in, along with several others; saw a carriage draw up and a tall man with a thick bushy beard get out. That, I thought, would be Kropotkin. Let us assume ten minutes to get started; then three hours of meeting, at least. I pulled my pocket watch out of my waistcoat and peered at it. It was eight o’clock. It was going to be a long evening.

It was. Almost interminable. Even my skilled placidity in these situations was only just sufficient to get me through. My mind fixed on this Jenny. It hammered away time and again at the whole business, and I could not make head nor tail of it. I was only sure of one thing. I had been lied to, once again.

So I waited, cold, very hungry and distraught. Nine o’clock; ten o’clock; half past ten. A few people drifted out from time to time; perhaps they did not find the Prince’s words satisfying. Perhaps they had heard them before. Some hung around outside talking, others walked swiftly off. None interested me.

Eventually Jenny came out. Bundled up in a coat, with a hat on her head, but there was no mistaking her. She was with a man, the one who had told me to set out the chairs. He also had a hat, pulled down over his face. His right hand was in the pocket of his overcoat.

And he touched her. Stroked her back with his left hand in an unmistakable gesture of intimacy. And she responded, leaning her body against his. There was no mistake. I did not imagine it.

So I followed. A more hot-blooded person than I might have accosted them. “Hello, Your Ladyship, fancy seeing you here!” But I decided that knowledge was a better revenge. I would discover everything, first of all.

So I tagged behind at a good distance, just keeping them in view, ducking into the shadows whenever the man paused to tie his shoelaces, or strike a match against a wall, or when they stopped on the pavement to talk. This they did often enough to make me realise they were afraid of being followed. Nobody stops that often. But I had learned from a master. George Short had cut his teeth as a runner before becoming a reporter. He knew all the tricks of how to follow without being seen and, I suspected, knew how to pick pockets and listen in to conversations in bars and restaurants as well. When I was getting going he taught me some of his skills. “You never know when it might come in handy,” he’d said. “These university graduates think it’s all about a well-turned phrase. They wouldn’t be able to get a story if it bit them on the leg.”

His skills had never been that useful before, but now I saw their point. It is a question of getting into the rhythm of the person you are following, watching them intently until you can predict what they are going to do; moving in harmony with them, so that you are already tucked away in the shadows before they have even begun to turn. Of knowing how far back to be. Of knowing how to walk light-footedly but naturally, so that you are unsuspected even if you are seen.

I followed them for a mile or so; down Jubilee Street, along Commercial Road, up Turner Street, then into Newark Street, a row of houses, run-down and poor. They stopped outside one of them which was all in darkness, and talked. I heard nothing, but I did not need to; he wanted her to come in; that was clear. She refused, initially, and my spirits rose a little. But then she took his hand, allowed him to lead her to the door, and they vanished inside.

If I had been in a state of shocked disbelief before, it was nothing in comparison to how I felt now. I could describe my emotions for a very long time, but in fact they were very simple. I was jealous to the point of insanity. She was mine, I told myself. It was another one of her lies to add to the growing list. And such a man? Such people? Clearly, they weren’t notes of her husband’s payments to the Brotherhood that I had found in that folder; they were hers. He had discovered and was trying to find out what she was doing. This man was probably one of that group and she was paying him. My stomach turned over with disgust. I would expose her to the world. I would destroy her reputation so completely she would have to leave the country forever. How to do it? Hozwicki, obviously; I’d promised him a story; it would be better than he dreamed of. Then Seyd’s. I’d pull her husband’s companies down until their worth would fit in my back pocket in small change.

The thought calmed me. My patience slowly returned, and I became thorough. When the man emerged, I followed him until he got back to what were evidently his lodgings, then took a bus back to the West End. I went into an early-morning café—it was by now four in the morning—and borrowed some paper and an envelope from the owner. I considered a long and violent denunciation, but such things are never effective; they make the writer seem hysterical. So instead I kept it short.

Dear Lady Ravenscliff,

Please accept my resignation as your agent in the matter of your husband’s will.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Braddock.

I delivered it by hand to her house, then took the bus back to Chelsea. It was still only six when I slipped quietly into the house, and no one was yet up, not even Mrs. Morrison. I tiptoed up the stairs, avoiding the squeakiest of the treads, and collapsed on my bed. It was an eternity since I had slept properly, but I was afraid sleep would elude me now as well. I shouldn’t have worried. I was still thinking this when my thoughts began to disintegrate and I plunged into oblivion.

CHAPTER
21

If I harboured the idea that this might be an end to it, then I could not have been more wrong. I slept until two in the afternoon, but was hardly refreshed when I finally surfaced. I did have a couple of moments’ grace before the full recollection of the previous evening came back, but it was not much of a respite. I was dirty, unshaven, and my bones ached still from tiredness, so I went downstairs in search of hot water. There was no one around, which was unusual; normally at that time of day Mrs. Morrison should be in the kitchen with her half-wit of a scullery maid, arguing over how to peel carrots. So I put a large pot on the hob myself, and yawned while it heated. On the kitchen table was a telegram, addressed to me. I knew the moment I saw it who it was from, and the surge of pleasure I felt should have warned me how feeble was my resolution of only a few hours previously. I considered tearing it in two and throwing it in the bin—I don’t need her; that’s all over—but couldn’t quite manage to be so manfully confident. What if there was something in there to show I was wrong? So I dithered while the water boiled and the kitchen filled with steam, and eventually reached a compromise. I would open it, read it and then tear it up in righteous anger.

Come immediately. Elizabeth.

The first word was enough to turn all my steely resolution a little rusty. All sorts of stories flooded into my mind. A lost twin. Devoted sisters torn asunder, and now reunited. All nonsense. It could not possibly be so. Could it? The doubt was small, but enough because I wanted it to be so. I washed and shaved and dressed in clean clothes, and by the time I was ready to face the world I was decided. I would see her. Just in case. But I would make her wait, and use the time to find out some more. It was the first time she had wanted to see me more than the other way around, and I liked the feeling too much to lose it quickly.

I went back to Fleet Street. Hozwicki wasn’t in the King & Keys so I went to the
Telegraph,
walked up the stairs to the newsroom, and found him, sitting alone in a corner with a typewriter. He was the only person in the entire place to use one; everyone else wrote their stories out by hand, and I noticed he kept on getting irritated glances from others in the room every time he pressed a key. It was a woman’s machine, not for men.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’m busy.”

“I don’t care.”

I must have said it in an impressive fashion, as he stopped typing and looked up at me. “So, talk.”

“Not here. I don’t want your colleagues to learn about Comrade Stefan.”

I hadn’t meant it to come out as a threat. But that was how he took it. He stared stonily at me.

“Come outside for a walk. It will only take five minutes.”

He considered for a second, then stood up and put on his coat. I could see he was angry; I imagine I would have been as well. From his point of view he had extended a hand of friendship, and I was using his gesture to blackmail him. I would have felt guilty about it, if I’d had the leisure to think straight.

“Well then? What do you want now?”

He stood on the pavement as the crowds of people parted to walk around us, and indicated he was going to go no further. We were just outside the
Telegraph
’s doors.

“I didn’t mean to threaten,” I said. “I had no intention of saying anything. But I have to talk, and I don’t have a great deal of time.”

“What happened yesterday? I heard you came, then left. Too boring for you?”

“It probably would have been, but I didn’t find out. There was a woman there. She called herself Jenny. In her forties, German accent.”

He nodded.

“Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Not unless…”

“No,” I interrupted. “No games. Not today. No bargains, no you-scratch-my-back nonsense. I need to know now. I must know. Who is she?”

He looked at me carefully, then nodded. “And you won’t say why you want to know?”

“Not a single, solitary word. But you must tell me.”

He stared at the pavement for a few seconds, then turned on his heel, and walked off, turning up Wine Office Court, past the Cheshire Cheese, where there was no one around. Eventually he stopped and turned.

“Her name is Jenny Mannheim,” he said. “But that’s not her real name. She arrived from Hamburg about six months ago. It appears she was involved in a murder there and had to flee the country. When she got here, she contacted some groups of exiles, but has steered clear of the Germans. She doesn’t want anyone to know she is here. She’s afraid of the police, or of being murdered herself in revenge. She’s a very tough woman, ruthless in argument and quite capable of being ruthless in action, I imagine. Her life is the struggle. It is all she cares about, and all she talks about. She is entirely cold and deeply unpleasant. So I’m afraid I cannot tell you much more. Even what I know did not come from her. I avoid her as much as possible. And so should you, if you’ve any sense.”

“So how do you know about her?”

“She approached these groups which—well, they don’t trust many people. They’re used to spies and informers and police agents trying to infiltrate them. They’re careful. Naturally they wanted to make sure she was who she said.”

“How did they do that?”

“Easily enough. They wrote letters to comrades in Germany. They checked she was on the boat she said she was on. They used people in the police there to see if she’s done what she said. She had. She’s a nasty bit of work. Even by the standards of her type.”

“Quite pretty, though.”

“It would be interesting to see the reaction if you said that to her face.”

“She left yesterday with a man.” I gave a brief description, as best as I could. It wasn’t necessary.

“Jan the Builder,” Hozwicki said flatly. “That’s what he’s called. He sometimes works on building sites. Josef pointed him out to me once, and told me to beware of him. Again, no one knows his real name. And, since you no doubt already know, yes, he is a member—probably the leader—of the Brotherhood of Socialists.”

“And are they…?”

Hozwicki looked at me. “Dangerous people who you do not want to know. You remember the hold-up at Marston’s brewery? The armed robbery at that Cheapside jeweller’s about a year ago?”

He was referring to two violent, but unsuccessful, crimes. “They were what are called expropriations, to fund the cause. Anarchism is split into two; those who think such things justifiable and necessary, and those who believe they ruin everything we are striving to achieve.”

“We?”

He nodded.

“So tell me more about these people.”

“Hard. It’s not as if they advertise themselves. But there can’t be many of them. Most are Lithuanian or Latvian, most would be executed or imprisoned if they went home. They hate Russia and all things Russian. And everyone else. They seem to have money. Presumably from robberies. More than that, I cannot tell you. I don’t know. They are not interested in listening to speeches or theoretical discourses. They think that is bourgeois. They think violent action is the only true revolutionary activity. I think that if they could, they would happily murder Kropotkin as well as any other Russian.”

“What is all this to you, Stefan?” I asked. I was genuinely curious. “Why are you part of all this rigmarole?”

He frowned as he turned to look at me. “I’m Jewish and I’m Polish,” he said. “Why do I need to say anymore? I do not wish to kill anyone, Matthew. I want to set the world free, so mankind can realise its full potential and live in harmony. An aspiration you no doubt think is foolish, naïve and absurd.”

I shrugged. “As aspirations go it is not a bad one. I am merely sceptical about its chances of success.”

“You are not alone. But compromise…” Here he turned with a smile playing over his mouth, which made quite a change. He had a pleasant smile. He really should have used it more often. “Compromise is a weapon of oppression wielded by capitalists to ensure nothing ever changes.”

“Of course it is,” I said heartily. “Damn good thing too.”

He grinned. “And now we understand each other. I’m glad. I’ve always appreciated your efforts to be kind. Do not think I was unreceptive. But I grew up in a world of suspicion and it is not a habit I can abandon easily. You are a good man. For a lackey of the system.”

“I will take that as a compliment,” I said. “And I in turn appreciate your willingness to talk to me. I will use the information—cautiously, shall we say. And one day I will give you a proper explanation.”

He nodded. “If you know what is good for you, you’ll steer clear of Jan the Builder and anyone associated with him.”

“We’re old drinking mates,” I said.

“And whatever you do, don’t start making eyes at Jenny Mannheim. She’d eat you for breakfast and pick her teeth with your bones.”

He nodded, and strode off to his work, leaving me pondering his last words. They had brought me back to the subject of my obsession. I had forgotten about her for the time I was talking to him. Now she came flooding back to my mind. An associate of Jan the Builder.

I had information, but no understanding. In fact, I was worse off than before. Every time I added a nugget of information to my paltry hoard, it made the rest seem the more confusing. So I now knew more about this band of anarchists; knew a small amount more about this woman I had encountered the previous day. But I still knew nothing about their connection with Ravenscliff. What was more I did not care; my obsession with Elizabeth had grown to the point that it was almost uncontrollable. I agonised over whether I would go and see her, as I had been asked to do.

I knew I would, sooner or later. I knew I would not be able to keep away. But I put up a fight. I did not embrace my fate eagerly or without resistance. Even as my feet took me down Fleet Street, past Charing Cross, up Haymarket and to Piccadilly Circus, I told myself I had not made up my mind. I could, at any moment, hop on to a bus and go home. I had free will. I would decide, in my own good time. I went through all the reasons for treating her command with the disdain it deserved, and they were overwhelming. Went through all the reasons for obeying her, and they were paltry. And still I walked on, hands in pockets, eyes looking down at the pavement, getting ever closer, with each step, to St. James’s Square.

I still told myself that I had not yet made up my mind as I stood on the doorstep, and as I rang the bell. And it was true. I had decided nothing. The only decision I could take was to walk in the other direction; indecision made me sleepwalk towards her, go through the door when it was opened by the housemaid, climb up the stairs to the little sitting room where she was waiting for me. Had my heart given way then, I would not have been surprised, and might not have been ungrateful. But it did not; and I walked in to see her sitting on the settee by the fire, a book on her lap, looking at me gravely. And I felt that familiar flood of emotion coursing through my being, as I knew that I was back, exactly where I needed to be.

“Sit down, Matthew,” she said softly, gesturing to the place beside her. With an immense effort of will, I sat in the armchair opposite, so I would not have to suffer her perfume, the sound of her clothes as she moved or the feeling that, with the slightest gesture, I could reach out and touch her. I was safe, immune there. She noticed, of course, and knew why I had done it: it was a gesture of weakness, not of defiance; she understood it all.

She continued to look gravely at me, but was not trying to fascinate; there was a seriousness in her glance which hinted at sympathy and understanding, although I knew all too well that I read far too much into such things, and always tried to give the best possible interpretation.

“You asked, so here I am,” I said.

“I wrote because I received this distressing message from you. I thought the least I could expect was some sort of explanation.”

“Do you really think you need one?”

“Of course. I was entirely perplexed by it.”

I searched her face intently, trying desperately to see through to the thoughts underneath. I knew that everything depended on what I said next. Why, I do not know. I was simply certain.

“Do you ever tell the truth?”

“Do you ever do as you are told? If you remember, I told you quite plainly that you should not give any attention to the anarchists. You agreed, promised, and immediately broke your promise. I think I have more of a right to be cross than you, as your misdeed was premeditated.”

“That was you, last night?” I asked, still somewhat incredulous.

“Yes. It is necessary,” she said, and instantly, her voice, her expression, her face were all transformed. It was eerie and frightening, like seeing a wax puppet melt and reconstitute itself as a different character. The changes were infinitely subtle, but the effect was total. The lines of the frown around the bridge of the nose, the set of the jaw, the slightly hooded look of the eyelids, the tilt of the head and the hunched-up, wearied pose of the shoulders. Fragments of movement changed her from a society lady of aristocratic bearing into a grim, hard-living, independent revolutionary from the East End. I still could not believe it, and even worse could not see how she did it.

Then, in a twinkling of the eye, the anarchist Jenny vanished, and Elizabeth reappeared, smiling mockingly at me. “It is really not so difficult,” she said. “I always had a talent for mimicry and acting. It was merely a question of studying, to get the clothes and the look and the opinions just so. And I have spoken German since birth. It is my first language.”

“I suppose it would be too much to ask for an explanation—an honest, truthful one—of what you were doing there?”

She considered. “No. I think it might well be a good idea. Do you want the long version, which would indicate a willingness to forget about that unfortunate letter of yours? Or the short one?”

“The long one,” I said in a tone lightly tinged with reluctance.

She rang the little silver bell on the table, and asked for refreshments, then picked up my letter and tossed it onto the fire.