Tom All-Alone's (30 page)

‘What did he mean by that?'

Alice takes out her handkerchief and holds it to her mouth. ‘It sickens me even to think of it, sir – how anyone could—'

Woodcourt puts his hand on her shoulder. ‘Take your time. We have a policeman here with us. You have nothing to fear now. Just tell us what Mr Boscawen said.'

She looks up at his face and seems to gain courage. ‘He told me he'd dug open the grave where the babies were buried and – and – cut the hands away from the corpses. He said he was going to send them one by one to the men who'd fathered them. To punish them for what they'd done.'

Charles stares at her, understanding at last the riddle of the letters, and the terrible menace the last one had contained. Julius Cremorne had opened that package to find the decomposing hand of his own bastard child; a child born of incest and rape, a child he had instructed Jarvis to do away with. Small wonder he went as white as death when he saw it; small wonder he looked as if he'd seen a ghost.

Alice glances up at him fearfully, mistaking his grim expression for disapproval. ‘I told that man Boscawen I didn't want to hear any more about it – that I had to go – that the carriage was
waiting for me. Then as I ran down the passageway I heard him calling to me that he would write to me and explain, but I never heard from him again.'

The tears well and spill again. ‘I don't think poor Hester even knew she was with child – how could she, an innocent like her? Half the time she seems scarcely more than a child herself, playing make-believe that she's the housekeeper here and that I'm her maid, not her nurse. You'd never think this place was a lunatic asylum, to hear the way she talks of it, but we none of us have the heart to disenchant her. And then she was so weak for so long after she had the baby it made my heart bleed, just to look at her, and in the end I felt so wretched about what I'd done I made up my mind to tell her the truth – tell her what had really happened. So I went to her early this morning and told her that she'd had a baby – that that was the real reason why she'd been so sick. I said I'd made sure it was given a Christian burial, and that it was in a Better Place now, but then the poor girl started crying and crying and talking wildly about her mother leaving her behind and how she would never do that to her baby, and then she said she wanted to see it and however much I said that was impossible she would not leave it be. It takes her that way sometimes, poor little thing, but I can usually calm her with a dose of opiates – it always seems kinder to me than that dreadful camisole Miss Darby insists on. But in my haste to fetch the medicine bottle I must have left the door unlocked, and when I got back the room was empty, and Hester had vanished.'

‘And that's why Jarvis locked you in here.'

She nods. ‘And because I wouldn't tell him where she had gone.'

‘But how in God's name could you possibly know?'

‘It's not so very difficult to guess, sir. Hester has never left this place once in the ten years she's been here. Where else
would she go? She's gone to see her baby,' she says softly. ‘She's gone to Tom-All-Alone's.'

Charles gets to his feet, knowing now what he must do next and wondering for the first time what has happened to Wheeler. A question quickly answered when they get to the landing and see Sam coming up the stairs towards them.

‘No sign, Mr Maddox,' he reports, reverting, no doubt unconsciously, to the courtesy Charles was entitled to when he still had rank in the Detective.

‘What do you mean?' asks Charles, with a jolt of alarm.

‘Given what that young woman was saying, I thought we ought to make sure that bastard Jarvis didn't give us the slip, but I've searched all the rooms downstairs and I can't find him anywhere.'

Charles follows him quickly downstairs, where they find the woman in the hall, berating another young woman clad in grey.

‘Where's Jarvis?' interrupts Charles, forcing her round to look at him.

‘
Mr
Jarvis had to step out a moment.'

‘This is a police investigation, madam, and he has serious allegations to answer.'

‘He
may be a constable,' she snaps, pointing at Wheeler as if he were a species of insect, ‘but
you
, as far as I can tell, have no official standing whatsoever. If you
had
I am sure we would have heard about it long before now. And Mr Jarvis has been charged with no crime – has, indeed,
committed
no crime. He is perfectly free to come and go as he sees fit and you have no right to detain him.'

At that moment there's the sound of wheels on the sweep, but by the time they emerge on to the front step the carriage is already turning down the drive and gathering speed.

Woodcourt turns to Charles with a look of disgust. ‘No doubt he is endeavouring to “retrieve” Hester just as he did Anne Catherick. But this time, thank God, he has no idea where the poor girl has gone. You will be able to reach her long before he does.'

Charles looks round; something about this sudden departure is making him uneasy. And then he catches sight of the woman's frosty face and sees the look that's now upon it.

‘She heard it all,' he says to Woodcourt. ‘She was listening to every word we said – she knows where Hester went, and now Jarvis has gone after her.'

He calls to Wheeler to have the cab brought round, and fast, and he's already stepping into it when Woodcourt catches his arm and offers to go with him. ‘She will be distraught and very possibly in need of medical attention—'

‘I've had some training, myself. Not much, but enough. I know what to do. And your presence is more urgently required here until more help arrives.'

It's clear from Woodcourt's face that he cannot argue with that conclusion, but he is not done yet. ‘At least,' he says, his hand still on Charles' arm, ‘at the very least, take Miss Carley with you. Imagine yourself in this young girl's position – she has just made a terrible discovery, then finds a man pursuing her she has never seen, in a huge and dangerous city she does not know. She is weak already, and I dare not speculate as to the consequences of further distress so soon after her confinement.'

Charles nods and the doctor goes quickly back inside, returning almost at once with the nurse, enveloped in a blanket clearly taken from one of the beds upstairs.

‘She is willing to go with you, though Heaven knows she could do with hot tea and a few hours' sleep.'

‘I am quite well,' insists Alice. ‘The only thing that matters is that we find Hester and take her somewhere safe.'

‘I pray to heaven we can,' replies Charles, climbing up to the box beside the driver and telling him to make all speed towards London, with a crown at stake if he can catch the carriage ahead of them.

As they clatter towards town, Charles stops every coach and vehicle coming towards them, picking up the trace of Jarvis each time but finding him ever just too far ahead, ever maintaining his crucial advantage before them, until they reach a crossroads where four roads meet and have to make a choice: the road to Finchley, the road to the West End, and the road to London. The driver draws up – they can reach their destination by two of these ways, but which is best – which did Jarvis choose? Charles sits hesitating a moment, before noticing a young man on a small stool at the side of the road, sketching the sun rising over the city and the steeples and house-tops lifting through the mist in the slanting rays. Charles jumps down and strides towards him, asking if a carriage has passed this way.

‘The driver was in a green greatcoat, and the man inside had a thick grey beard.'

‘And a rather large watch, I believe,' says the young man. ‘Yes, I saw him. He has some fifteen minutes' advantage of you. But I sent him the wrong way.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't understand—'

‘He asked about the young woman. She passed this way too, something over an hour ago. A strange little creature in a long dark cloak, but I could see she had only a nightgown on underneath. She asked me the way to Tom-All-Alone's. I told her that polluted graveyard was no place for a young girl, but she began to weep in a piteous fashion, saying I had no right to
suspect her and it was the fault of others that she was alone here in such strange circumstances, and something more I did not understand about a “guardian”. She became so agitated then, all the while shrinking from me as if I might molest her, that I agreed, much against my better judgement, to find her a cab and give her the money to pay for it. Not before time, I think. She seemed ready to drop with fatigue.'

And not just fatigue, thinks Charles, attempting to press several shillings into the young man's hand.

‘That is not necessary, sir,' he says, pulling away. ‘It was little enough of a service after all, and I can tell you mean her only kindness. That other gentleman
said
the same, but there was something about him that made me doubt it. Not least the fact that he called her a cripple, and a freak, and various other terms I am too humane to repeat. That and the look of the groom he had with him made me uneasy, so I sent them on the other road, telling them she was still on foot.'

Charles' heart turns to iron in his breast. ‘This groom – what did he look like?'

‘He was little more than a boy, in fact, but the
strangest-looking
boy I ever saw in such a—'

‘Sandy hair – a long dark coat?'

‘And a bad bruise to the side of his face. Indeed I am surprised his master allowed him in public in such a state—'

But Charles is already running towards the cab. He climbs back up, urging the driver to a gallop and cursing himself for not realizing that Mann would have made for the asylum just as he did, and imploring a God he does not really believe in that they will find this wretched girl before he does. It's not long before they're descending fast into narrow streets and gloomy overhanging thoroughfares where the morning has not yet penetrated and the street-lamps still cast their sickly yellow.

Perhaps it's the fall he took, perhaps the chill of the exposed seat, but his vision starts to blur again and his mind begins to play tricks with him. The few people they pass in the streets seem hardly alive, and as they raise faces to him that seem now as blank and eyeless as in a long-repressed nightmare, the kaleidoscope pieces of the case start to shift and mingle with his own haunted memories – his mother gagged and bound, her eyes streaming and imploring, her bare feet kicking against the two women struggling to carry her away. The stifled incoherent screams that even now are inextricable from the cool impersonal voice of the doctor ensuring his father that he had made the right decision, that the institution was a model of its kind, and that Mrs Maddox would be treated kindly there and given the time she needed to reconcile herself at last to the loss of her daughter. He never knew how much his father had believed of this; all he did know for sure was that he never saw his mother again. And that all of it – from the beginning – was his fault, and there was nothing he could ever do that that would put it right.

With the clocks striking nine they come to a halt by the grimy side-street where we followed him once before. As Charles swings down to the ground into the steam from the horses, he hears the sound of hooves and turns to see a carriage disappearing towards St Giles, and knows with a hopeless certainty that despite their haste – despite the young man's help – they were still too slow: Jarvis has got here before them. He hastens Alice Carley from the carriage and the two of them begin down the alley towards the covered way. He thought once before how apt this place was for ambush, and as they approach the bend before the tunnel he can just make out a slumped figure lying face down at the side of the path. But it's only when Alice Carley gasps and shrinks back against his side
that he recognizes who it is. The cape and the tall silk hat mark him out as a gentleman; the greying beard identifies him as Alexander Jarvis. But the heavy gold watch is long gone. Charles kneels by the man's head and sees at once that all the talk of garrotting in this part of town is not just the hype of an over-heated press. There's a deep weal around Jarvis' neck and he is struggling to draw breath.

‘What happened?' says Charles, taking him roughly by the collar. ‘Where's Mann?'

‘We were set upon,' he gasps. ‘Thieves – four of them. I felt the rope around my neck and hands dragging me down. I called to Mann to help me. But he just laughed.' He chokes, coughing spittles of red over his white stock. ‘He just laughed in my face and left me here in the filth.'

‘So where is he now?'

Jarvis lifts a heavy hand and points. ‘He went ahead. After the girl.'

Charles gets to his feet and covers the final yards to the tunnel with his heart hammering at his bones. Up ahead, where the lamp is still burning over the iron gate, one slight figure is bending over another, lying prone on the wet ground. Charles takes out his gun, but his eyes are dim and he cannot make out his target. He starts towards them again, and even as the images lurch and separate before his eyes he thinks he sees the low glint of a blade – thinks he sees an arm raised – and he knows he cannot make it in time – knows there is only one thing he can do—

He lifts the pistol and shoots into the air.

The recoil has his boots slithering on the greasy cobbles and he slips to his knees. Then all at once he senses Alice Carley come up behind him, and though he cries out to stop her she gives a cry of horror and runs forward to the gate. When he
gets to his feet and staggers after her he sees, alone, lying on the step, the twisted body of a young girl, one hand clutched around the iron bars, the skirts of her white nightgown stained dark red. And Alice Carley is already weeping as she takes the girl's head in her lap and cradles it there, rocking to and fro, the tears running down her cheeks.