The House at Baker Street (26 page)

We followed the boy up Commercial Road, and then down one of the streets, until we were almost in Stepney. Before us was a huge grey-brick warehouse. The name on the side had long since faded
away, and the walls were blackened with dirt and the traces of a long-ago fire. The few windows were boarded, and the huge great doors were securely bolted. Only one small side door remained
unsealed. I looked around. We were surrounded by other great warehouses, and the streets were empty and abandoned. Irene stood by the one small door that she had just finished unlocking. It was
open now, and an odd white light spilled into the street. We stood there, only a few feet away from the Ordinary Man.

‘Maybe we should . . .’ Mary started to say, but I would not let her finish. I was angry, so very angry. I thought of Laura Shirley and the Whitechapel Lady and all those others I
had never met or known. I thought of the lives taken and the lives smashed and the damage done and the blood spilled and the hearts broken. I thought of all this man had taken, assuming his right
to do so. My anger flared and soared and burnt, and, without stopping to be careful or wary, I walked straight through the doorway into the warehouse.

I was surprised. I am not sure what I expected to find, but it was not this.

Most of the warehouse had been screened off with heavy curtains, leaving a large room about twenty feet square. This room was very brightly lit with gas lamps. Highly polished mirrors directed
the light to various areas. The curtains themselves were either velvet, or had highly improbable country scenes painted on them. Various items stood about the room – larger plaster Greek
urns, mismatched sofas and chairs, fake statues. Along one wall stood a rail, and from this hung several items of clothing – all rather gaudy and diaphanous. In the centre of the room, on a
violently coloured Turkish carpet, stood a woman, perfectly still, posing as if for a portrait. She wore a Greek helmet, sandals – and nothing else.

‘Close the bleeding door, love,’ she called out. ‘I’m freezing my tits off ’ere.’

Mary gasped, half laughing. Irene did laugh, then turned the wide-eyed Micky round and sent him outside. I looked behind me to where I expected the painter to be. Instead I saw a large wooden
box, about two feet square, balanced on a tripod. A large glass lens was inset on the side facing the girl. A cloth hung over the back of it, with a man underneath the cloth.

So, a camera. And being operated by the Ordinary Man. He even wore the same jacket with the same white stain on it. The one I had spotted over and over again, the only mark by which I’d
recognized him. He came out slowly and glared at me – though more with annoyance than anger, to my surprise.

‘You again,’ he said wearily. ‘You just keep popping up, dontcha? What the ’ell do you want?’

I had nothing to say. I just stared at him, with the uneasy feeling creeping over me that I had made a horrible mistake – again.

Mary had walked over to a table at the back of the room. There were boxes of photos on it, and she shamelessly began poring over them.

‘Pictures,’ Mary said. ‘Dirty pictures. Very dirty pictures!’ she said, a little shocked, but not all that horrified. She turned one round and round in her hand. Irene,
suddenly curious, went over to join her. I did not move.

‘Pornography,’ I muttered. ‘Not blackmail.’

‘Look, who exactly are you?’ the Ordinary Man demanded, quite reasonably given the circumstances. In passing, I noted that I had been asked that question rather a lot recently. Maybe
I should give thought to acquiring business cards.

He must not have seen me properly before. Perhaps I was in shadow, as always. But as he came out from behind the camera, he turned one of the mirrors towards me, so the light was full on my
face. It was very bright, but I did not flinch. He, however, did. He must have recognized me, as a woman he’d followed. He did not speak. Neither did I. We merely stood there, the shadows
flickering between us, watching each other for a reaction we could understand.

The naked woman sighed, relaxed her pose, and rubbed her back. Spotting an opportunity, Mary hurried over to her with a dressing gown and started chatting to her, leaving the photographs to
Irene. Mary had an art of putting anyone at their ease, and within moments she and the young woman, named Ruby, were talking brightly about photography. Mary’s questions sounded artless, but
she was gradually drawing out of Ruby who the man photographed, how he photographed, could he take a photograph in secret?

‘According to the name on these pictures,’ Irene called out to me, ‘this man is called Robert Sheldon.’

‘Leave those alone!’ he ordered, but he didn’t take his gaze from mine.

I had expected defiance. I had expected anger. I had even expected, perhaps, horror at discovery. I had not expected his fear. The blood drained from his face, his eyes opened as wide as could
be, his hand trembled. What could he possibly fear from me? He had brazenly followed me all over London, but he had never looked at me this way.

That was when I got the first inkling. Perhaps I had not taken the wrong path. Perhaps I had merely taken a necessary detour.

‘The Whitechapel Lady,’ I said quietly. Over in the corner Irene still turned over the photographs. At the other side of the room Mary and Ruby chattered happily, and fruitfully. Yet
at that moment there was no one else in the world but him and me.

‘I didn’t kill her,’ he said. His pale eyes bored into mine and I believed him.

‘You were outside her home,’ I insisted. ‘You followed her. You followed her all over Whitechapel and when I visited her, you followed me. Then she dies in a pool of
blood.’ I had no idea I could be so inexorable. He looked as if the curse had come upon him.

‘I watched you, that’s all. Just watched!’ he said, in a low, intense voice.

‘Why?’

‘I thought you were a do-gooder. I thought you’d try to get me stopped. I wanted to see who you talked to about me.’

‘Why would I talk about you?’

‘’Cos people like you do talk, doncha,’ he said bitterly. ‘You decent people. Talk about morality and doing good and cleaning up the streets and all you’re doing is
doing people like me and Ruby out of a day’s wages. Whitechapel’s full of women like you, you know, wanting to stop us. I’ve met your kind before, and had to move on ’cos of
it. I’m not ’aving your lot interfering again.’

And I knew that was a lie. Never mind, for now.

‘And was the Whitechapel Lady a do-gooder?’

‘Yeah.’ He sneered. ‘Dangerous profession.’

‘Do you know who killed her?’

‘No, ’course not!’ he insisted, turning pale. ‘I just wanted to see what she did. Wanted to check she wasn’t going to interfere with my work.’

‘Liar,’ I pronounced. I moved forward, the light behind me now, so my face was in shadow. ‘Someone told you to follow her. Someone told you to watch her. Someone told you to
report on her. And when that someone heard I had visited her, had asked questions, someone told you to kill her. And how long, exactly, was I going to last before I too was found in a pool of
blood?’

‘I didn’t kill her!’ he stammered, shaking. ‘I saw her, I saw all that blood. I went up there – he asked me to go up there . . .’

‘Why?’ I demanded. He became suddenly silent. ‘It was a warning, wasn’t it? This is what will happen if you talk to anyone. But I am here now, and he is not. Tell
me,’ I insisted. He glanced around, like a trapped animal. ‘Tell me,’ I said again, but then, like a trapped animal does sometimes, he lashed out, the heavy mirror beside him
suddenly pushed down onto me. I had a second, barely a second, to step out of the way, before it smashed onto the ground next to me. The shattered glass flew up and scratched my hands and face.

A moment before I had felt like Nemesis herself. Now I felt like a little old lady once again.

Irene ran forward and caught him by the wrist. He squirmed, but her grip was like iron.

‘Are you hurt?’ she asked me.

‘No,’ I said, my voice suddenly weak. Mary ran over and studied my cuts and scratches.

‘You’re fine,’ Mary confirmed. ‘Just superficial cuts. Lucky for you.’ She turned on Mr Sheldon. ‘If you had hurt her . . .’

‘So what!’ he cried. ‘Do you think I’m afraid of you? Whatever you could do to me, he could do much worse. I’m under his protection, do you understand!’ he
screamed, his voice rising, trying to convince me as much as himself. ‘If you try anything, you’d be dead before you left Whitechapel!’

‘Maybe,’ Irene said, letting him go. ‘But we have protection too,’ she whispered, enjoying what she told him. ‘If you hurt any of us, we know a man who can and will
hunt you to the ends of the earth, and tear your heart out.’

We were at an impasse. He was too afraid to speak, our protectors were silent, invisible and deadly, and no one knew what to do next.

‘Leave ’im alone, can’t yer?’ Ruby said, not angrily. ‘Look, ’e ain’t a bad man, not a good one neither, but ’e’s been all right to me and I
like this job.’

‘Do you?’ I asked, surprised.

‘It’s indoors,’ Ruby said, going to stand next to Robert Sheldon, laying one hand on his arm. He didn’t turn to look at her, but he did cover her hand with his for a
moment. ‘In the warm, no one touches me or paws me – so I’d say this was pretty good, and ’e found me, and ’e gave me this, so stop scaring ’im, will
yer?’

‘Sorry,’ Mary said, spontaneously. ‘It’s just . . .’

‘’E follows people,’ Ruby said. Sheldon seemed to be getting his breath back, and was standing a little taller. He was watching Ruby with astonished eyes. I don’t think
he had known she cared. ‘’E’s good at it, and no one notices ’im. But I swear that’s all ’e does.’

‘I don’t recognize anyone in the photographs,’ Irene said. ‘But I doubt he’d keep the juicy ones here.’

‘Is that what you did?’ I asked. ‘Take secret photographs? Hidden behind a curtain?’ But my accusations sounded weak even to me.

‘I’m not sure it works like that,’ Mary said. ‘This equipment is hardly discreet.’

I turned back to Robert Sheldon. I had an idea. There was a way to eliminate at least one suspect.

‘Have you seen him then? This man?’ I asked. He shook his head. He would not answer, but Ruby did. She didn’t seem to be afraid. Perhaps she didn’t know she was supposed
to be.

‘I did,’ she said. ‘Just once. ’E came to see Robert. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t ’ave been looking,’ she said in response to Robert Sheldon’s
horrified look, ‘but I couldn’t resist a bit of a peek. ’e never saw me. Besides, I didn’t really see ’im. It was all dark in ’ere, and ’e was leaving. I
just saw sort of a shadow on the door, that’s all. Just an outline. Not enough to tell you what ’e looked like.’

‘Was he a large man?’ I asked.

‘No, just normal sized. Bit skinny really,’ she said, shrugging.

Robert Sheldon stared at her in silence, and then moved away. ‘I didn’t hurt anyone,’ he insisted. I could not gauge the truth of that. ‘Probably not,’ I told him.
‘You’re a coward.’

I had intended to provoke a reaction, and I got one. He drew himself up to his full height and marched down on us.

‘You insult me, you invade my work, you damage valuable equipment and you make foul accusations!’ he cried. Suddenly he was not the cringing little man any more, but someone with a
bit of power. Even his accent had changed, from Whitechapel to somewhere more salubrious. I wondered who he’d run to once we were gone. ‘If you come near me again, I shall call the
police. If you wish to question me again, contact my solicitor,’ and he shoved his solicitor’s card, drawn from his waistcoat pocket, at me as he ushered me through the door, ‘who
I’m sure will be happy to charge you with libel! I’m not scared of you,’ he said, one last blow as we tried to leave with our dignity. ‘How could I be scared of a bunch of
women?’

Outside, mercy of mercies, Micky had found a cab large enough to take us all home. It was an ancient, rickety old thing that must have been fashionable a hundred years ago. It
still bore traces of gilt paint here and there, and the upholstery, though worn and torn, held hints of the rich green colour it had once been. I was so tired. I had been kept going by the
excitement of the day but now, as the clocks struck five and the murky daylight became night, I was exhausted. Judging by her yawns, so was Mary. Micky held the door open as Mary and I clambered
in. We offered him a lift, but he said he’d rather walk. Carriages made him sick, he said. Irene paused and shook hands solemnly with the boy.

‘A pleasure working with you, Micky,’ she said. ‘I hope to meet you again sometime.’

‘And you, Miss Irene,’ Micky said, obviously impressed by Irene’s street skills.

Irene climbed in, and I leaned out of the window. ‘Micky, here’s the five shillings we owe you; it was a good day’s work,’ I said, handing him the money. ‘Come to
the kitchen at 221b tomorrow, and I’ll have hot gingerbread for you.’

His thin face lit up, and for a moment, he looked just like the little boy he was. Then he controlled himself and said, ‘Enough for the others too, missus? We share what we got!’
They looked after each other, the Irregulars.