The House at Baker Street (24 page)

She remembered where she was, and smiled at me. ‘But it’s only a vague memory,’ she said. ‘When I was five, my father sent me to Edinburgh.’

‘I know Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘It’s quite different from India.’

‘Quite,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Thank you for letting me talk to you like this. I have no one to talk to, not really. Mrs Forrester is very kind, but . . .’

‘But she is an employer,’ I added. I remembered what Mary had said upstairs, in her first consultation. She had led a very reserved life, and had no friends. I didn’t make
friends easily myself. I was reserved too, as much by choice as anything else, but I felt if I reached out to her just now, Mary could be my friend. Could I do this?

‘Can we be friends?’ Mary said impulsively, reaching out a hand to me. I smiled and took it briefly.

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

And then we became as close as Mr Holmes and John. She was my closest and perhaps only true friend. I doubt I would have gone as far as I had in this case without her encouragement, and her
eagerness to solve this.

On the way back to 221b, I told Mary about Sir George Burnwell’s visit. She found it irresistibly funny, and kept quietly chuckling to herself. She, too, agreed with me
that Lillian Rose had been sent to distract and possibly rob Sir George that night. Unlike Mr Holmes, though, we didn’t think she had been sent by one of the ladies in Sir George’s
ledger. We believed she had been sent by the very man we hunted.

Therefore, the best move was to find her. Find a prostitute, in Whitechapel.

Oh dear.

For this new line of investigation we needed one of Wiggins’ boys again. He sent along Micky, who was very bright, very shrewd and very young. He had been charged by us
to find Lillian Rose, and he had, and now he had come to lead us to her. Micky looked barely six, though he was probably older, but underfed. He had watchful eyes, and a large cap pulled down on
his head. Wiggins sent him along with the recommendation that he wasn’t much protection, but he was observant, and knew the people of Whitechapel well, which was exactly what we needed.

Wiggins had told Micky to do whatever we asked, and whistle if there was trouble. The Irregulars would be around somewhere, and would come running to the sound of their own distinct whistle.

Some instinct told me to take Irene along too.

We dressed as shabbily as possible, in stained, worn clothes. In Baker Street we looked like beggars. In Whitechapel we looked rich. Even the better-dressed women had thrice-turned dresses and
torn hems. This time we followed the silent, stern Micky, not through the main streets of Whitechapel, but through the alleyways, the yards, the dark corners. We walked down streets that never
appeared on any map, squeezed through tiny gaps into silent squares, hurried past dingy bars offering blind drunkenness for a penny. Whitechapel was bustling and busy in the daylight, people plying
what trade they could, calling to each other, chattering and flirting and arguing, but there was a tension in the air that wasn’t there before. The Ripper had been a story that was just
beginning to fade the first time we visited. Now he was back, hiding behind every door.

Whitechapel always waited for darkness. At night, the desperate and the hungry and the criminal spilled out onto the streets – but now they felt like someone was stalking them again. They
lived with death, even murder, day after day, but they were used to death in pub fights, arguments between couples, a robbery gone too far. But many of them believed that
he
had just killed
again.

They were waiting to be murdered. They were waiting for Jack to come back. Perhaps he was already here, round the next corner, behind the door, in the back of the dark yards.

Once Micky stopped, and nodded towards a house on the corner. He was looking at the ground-floor room. I could see the windows were filthy and blackened, as if there had been a large fire
inside. One was broken.

‘That’s where Mary Kelly was killed,’ Micky told us. It was the first time he’d spoken since we entered Whitechapel. ‘Ripper’s last victim.’

‘They still haven’t caught him?’ Irene asked. She had been out of the country for a while, after all. She had left before he struck. She didn’t know. He was still there,
still faceless, still haunting.

‘No,’ I whispered. We all stood there, stock still, staring at the tiny room. In my mind I could smell the blood, and the flames, I could feel her terror, the horror of the man who
found her. By all accounts, this final scene had been devastating. Almost Biblical, someone had said, which I didn’t understand, and then I read the Old Testament again. I shivered.

Beside me, Mary whispered, ‘Martha, this man we’re hunting, you don’t think . . .’

‘No, I don’t,’ I told her, more sharply than I had intended. ‘The Ripper destroyed bodies. Our quarry destroys minds and spirits.’

‘But the Whitechapel Lady was horrifically stabbed, eviscerated even.’

‘Weren’t like the Ripper,’ Micky said laconically, leading us back down Dorset Street, away from Miller’s Court. ‘Us lads, some of us, not me, they saw Mary
Kelly’s body, and Billy and Wiggins saw Long Liz and Kate Eddowes too. Wiggins even saw Polly Nichols,’ Micky told us, leading us through the maze of alleyways. People stared at us,
hating us, but when they heard the names Micky mentioned, they turned away in silence. ‘It was sickening, they said. Made your stomach turn, all their insides hanging out like that. But it
was kind o’ neat and tidy too, they said. Laid out proper. Neat cuts. All their stuff laid out at their feet. All done with a kind o’ order.’

‘Wait a minute – Billy saw this?’ I asked suddenly, stopping in the street. He’d never said, never even hinted.

‘Mr ’Olmes tried to stop ’im, but ’e insisted. That’s what we were doing down ’ere then, working for Mr ’Olmes. Din’t ’e tell
you?’

‘No, he did not,’ I said quietly. This had been soon after John had married. Mr Holmes had been quiet and brooding. I knew at the time he might have been working on the Ripper case,
but I assumed it was from his rooms, reading the newspapers, gathering information, thinking, perhaps going over the ground after the event. I never knew he had come here, seen the bodies, almost
stepped in their blood. And to take Billy, too!

For a moment I was so angry I could barely see straight. How dare he involve the boys in this case, of all cases! But then I stopped. What else would Mr Holmes have done but investigate the
Ripper? And as for Billy – you could never stop him when he was set on doing something. He had kept it secret, but then what were Mary and I doing?

Well, we were in Whitechapel, hunting down a horrific murderer, led by children, with no intention of telling Mr Holmes anything.

For me to be angry would be the pot calling the kettle black, to say the least.

I calmed down and nodded at Micky, who was staring at me worriedly.

‘’Ave I said the wrong thing?’ he asked.

‘No, Micky, I think you said exactly the right thing,’ Irene said gently. ‘So 221b is a house of secrets?’

‘More than we realized,’ Mary said dryly. ‘Still, that’s a problem for another time,’ she added briskly. ‘Let’s get on, shall we? Micky, you said you
saw the Whitechapel Lady’s injuries?’

‘Not me, some o’ the older lads,’ Micky told her. ‘Before the police got there. Blood everywhere, they said, all torn up, but left just to lie. No neatness. Insides just
tossed about all over the room. Like someone trying to be the Ripper, but not knowing how.’

‘I see,’ Mary said quietly. ‘Anything else we should know?’

Micky looked around, then lowered his voice.

‘The Whitechapel Lady – she ’ad her tongue cut out. And that was worse, ’cos we all know what that means.’

‘Yes, we do,’ Mary said, her jaw set. ‘“Don’t talk”. I do hope Lillian Rose hasn’t heard about that.’

Micky led us on through cold gazes and filthy streets and chilly sunshine. About ten minutes later he took us round a corner into a street with two houses that glowered at each
other across the sewage between them. They looked crooked and rickety, set to collapse at any moment. Micky led us into the one with the faintly green door. The house itself was crowded, every room
let, every corner of the rooms sub-let. The stairs swayed as we climbed them, the banister crumbled to woodworm dust beneath our hands. There were no loud noises, just a constant rumble of moans
and groans and complaints. The stench of boiling day-old cabbage just about shoved aside the foul odour of the drains.

Right at the top of the fourth and final set of stairs, Micky paused outside the door just to the right. Several of the panels had been kicked in long ago, but someone had nailed wood across
them, and whitewashed the door.

‘This is Lillian Rose’s place,’ Micky whispered. ‘Take my advice, just walk in. If you knock, she’ll think you’re the rozzers and be out the back window and
across the roofs in a flash.’

‘We can’t just walk in, she may be . . . you know . . .
busy
!’ Mary said significantly. Lillian Rose was a working girl, after all.

‘At eleven in the morning?’ Micky said scornfully. ‘She’ll just be getting up.’

As it happened, when I opened the door, Lillian Rose was awake, out of bed, and very angry.

‘Who the bleeding hell are you?’ she demanded, hands on her hips. I was momentarily disconcerted. She was not what I had expected. I’d pictured someone blowsy and garish,
colourful but ragged clothes slipping off grubby shoulders, hair dyed an unhealthy shade of blond. Or someone thin and gaunt, with hollow cheeks and over-bright eyes, already dying of some foul
disease.

What I saw was a neat young woman with a rosebud mouth, a sweet complexion that owed nothing to make-up and neatly arranged black hair, wearing a very demure blue dress. With a shock I realized
she could pass for a lady, if one in reduced circumstances, in any part of town. Only her green eyes were wrong, challenging and defiant, yet promising, in a way our eyes could never be.

The prostitute who doesn’t look like a prostitute. Lillian Rose was clever.

The tiny room was too crowded for all of us, so Micky stayed outside, along with Irene, who’d taken an interest in the odd, bright little boy. I stood fully inside the room, in the centre
of a faded rag rug, watching Miss Rose. Mary slid in beside me, staring round at the shabby but clean bed, the splintering wardrobe, the one small window and the single picture of a lake cut out of
a paper and pinned to the wall, with unabashed and fascinating curiosity.

We’d interrupted Miss Rose in the middle of throwing her few possessions – another dress, green, lower-cut, some paste jewellery and a book, I could not see what it was – into
a cardboard suitcase.

‘You’re running away?’ Mary burst out.

‘What’s it to you?’ Miss Rose demanded.

Her voice was rough, the accent sounded just like those of the people downstairs, yet it felt forced, as if it were a voice she had learnt. It was another hint that underneath the Whitechapel
prostitute was someone else, a long way away from here, a lifetime ago. Lillian Rose had been better than this, and something told me she would lie, steal, perhaps even kill to be better than this
again.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m Mary Watson,’ Mary said impulsively. ‘And this is Mrs Hudson. We’ve been investigating the death of the Whitechapel Lady, amongst other things.’

‘Fancy yourselves detectives?’ Miss Rose said scornfully. ‘Isn’t it nice, the games some people play? Bet you never get your hands dirty.’

‘They’re filthy now,’ Mary snapped back. ‘She died because of us.’

Miss Rose looked closer at Mary and must have seen the anger in her eyes.

‘So you, being a detective, figured out I was your next port of call?’ Miss Rose said softly. ‘Leading him right to my door, aren’t you?’

‘You needn’t be afraid of Sir George Burnwell,’ I assured her.

She snorted derisively. ‘Him? No, I’m not afraid of him.’ Her accent had modified since she heard ours. She was obviously a woman who could adapt herself to any company. Her
story must have been fascinating. I wish I could have heard it.

‘Then the other man,’ I said to her. ‘The man you passed Sir George’s secrets on to.’

She froze, utterly still. She did not even breathe. Only the scarf around her throat fluttered in the draught.

‘No,’ she whispered. The colour drained from her face, and she swayed where she stood.

‘We know what you did,’ Mary said, not ungently. ‘We know you were there to steal letters from Sir George Burnwell.’

We didn’t know, it was a guess, but a lucky one. Miss Rose stared at Mary, her eyes wide.

‘Letters women had written to Sir George,’ I said, almost making it up as I went along, feeling for the next step, judging my way by the shock on her face as we hit the mark over and
over again. It felt cruel to distress her like this, but it also felt so intoxicating, so exhilarating. I could not stop now, no matter how mean it was. ‘Were you given names? No, I believe
not. You were expected to use your own judgement. You were to study these letters, and choose the most devastating, the most shaming, the most damaging. You were to pick the plums of the
collection. You must be very clever.’

‘Cleverer than them,’ Miss Rose said, defiant again, but quieter, one hand resting on her hip, wanting to challenge me. ‘How stupid of them, to put it all down in paper and ink
like that. They wouldn’t whisper those things they wrote, not them, but they wrote them easily enough. Then they’re surprised when it gets used against them? Idiotic women.’ Her
voice belied her words. It was soft and sad now, a sob choked in her throat. Her accent was pure as mine. I wondered perhaps if there was a letter somewhere in her past.

‘Why not just break in and steal the letters?’ I wondered. ‘Sir George was hardly the type to warn these ladies. Was it perhaps because some of the letters were not kept
there?’

‘The cream of the crop!’ Miss Rose cried bitterly. ‘He’d lodged them with Sir Peter York, his solicitor,’ she explained. ‘He called it his “insurance
policy”. I was to get those. It wouldn’t be hard. He wanted to impress me. I have that effect.’