by Alex Scarrow
I have a name, though. A good enough place to start.
‘Bill, does this Polly regularly frequent the same inn, like you do? Is there a place I’m likely to find her?’
Tolly’s eyes were beginning to roll, showing their whites.
‘Bill? Stay with me awhile longer, if you please. Just one more question, ol’ chum, then I’ll let you go and I’ll bandage you up as good as new. I’d like you to tell me where I can find her.’
‘There’s bloody blood all over.’ Tolly’s voice slurred. ‘Jus’ like when I took ’er ’ead off.’ He grinned like a naughty boy. ‘Messy ol’ business . . . so it . . . isss. The choppy chop chop . . . Loverly looker . . . she was an’ all . . .’
‘Bill? Come on now. Where can I find this Polly Nichols?’
‘Rose an’ Crown!’ Tolly blurted, bleary-eyed. ‘Them pair of stupid bitches . . .’ His head nodded like a donkey, then finally drooped down to the table with a heavy thud, knocking his mug over. The blood and ale mixed together, forming a pink froth on the tabletop.
Babbitt stood up, leant over and lifted Tolly’s head up by his hair. He wasn’t dead just yet but he certainly wasn’t going to get any more sense out of him tonight. He yanked the blade out of the table and the man’s wrist. A curse of frustration. His aim should have been better.
It’s the ale. Babbitt had had to drink a couple of tankards of that awful brew during the evening as he’d chatted and guffawed along with Tolly; all of a sudden, the pair of them best of friends. His judgement was impaired. His aim with the blade was slightly off. No matter; he had a name. And in a place like this, he wouldn’t have to ask too far and wide before someone pointed her out to him.
Time to finish off. Needs to look random . . . violent. A drunken scuffle. Two men arguing over money or a woman. A fight that blew up out of nowhere and went too far.
Babbitt swiped his blade several times across Tolly’s forearm. Defensive wounds. Then, with two quick jabs, Tolly’s white cotton shirt started blossoming dark crimson roses around his waist.
He pushed the man off the table and he flopped unconsciously onto the stone floor. Babbitt kicked his own stool over, kicked the table hard enough that the jug of ale rolled off and shattered on the floor.
He studied his handiwork. A drunken brawl that got out of hand, a knife was pulled and William H Tolly, a low-life known round here for his short temper and violent outbursts, had become just another victim of the crime-ridden culture of this part of London.
The candle lay on its side, spilling a small puddle of wax onto the table, the flame guttering excitedly as the wick, freed from its straightjacket of wax, licked and melted a ‘V’ on one side. Babbitt stood it up and watched the flame calm itself once again as molten wax pooled around the base of the wick.
He licked his index finger and thumb and reached out to squeeze the flame’s life away. The room was dark once more, lit only by the jaundice-yellow glow of light from the gas lamp outside leaking in through the small window. Enough that he could see a faint twist of smoke rising from the dying pinprick glow of the candle’s wick.
He watched it curl, twist and then disappear.
One less putrid soul.
CHAPTER 23
29th September 1888, Holland Park, London
John’s talking again. Just like he had last night in his sleep. A mixture of muttering and soft moaning like one half of a barely heard conversation. Mary had climbed from her bed in the back room, put on a dressing gown, crossed the hallway in order to listen outside his bedroom door for a while, but he’d quietened down before she’d got close enough to pick out his words.
Tonight, though, his voice sounded more agitated. She tiptoed out of her room, along the short hallway once again and listened at his door. She could hear him stirring restlessly, the creak of bed springs, a man’s voice one moment, the whine of a child the next. Sometimes his words sounded pitiful, tearful; sometimes, cold, dry, admonishing and cruel.
‘John?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right in there?’
He was still making noises. She pushed the door ajar, stuck her head in. ‘John, love?’
He didn’t answer her. She crossed his bedroom floor and knelt down beside his bed. His head turned from one side to the other, rucking up the pillow, his legs peddling beneath the sheets.
‘. . . s’all chop chop . . . ain’t it? . . . an’ so much bloody mess . . . hmmm?’
He sounded so peculiar. The soft, gentlemanly tones in his voice were gone, replaced by the sort of coarse street snarl she’d only so recently hoped to leave behind and never hear again. It was like listening to someone else, another person. He sounded like any one of the thousands of drunken bullies who staggered out onto the streets at night come closing time.
‘Fuckin’ tart. Moves around from place to place . . .’
Then a different voice. ‘. . . there’s a good chap, Bill . . .’ That one sounded more like John’s voice. But she wondered who ‘Bill’ was; perhaps some of the memories of his old life were beginning to surface?
She hoped not. Not now. Not so soon. The thought of losing her John.
She caught herself. My John?
And why not? She reached out and curled a finger through a damp tress of his hair. Why not my John? She surprised herself with that. How possessive she suddenly felt.
Why can’t I have a man like John?
She was no less a woman than the sort of pale-faced cows who regularly took the air in Hyde Park; always in pairs and threes, immaculately dressed; stuck-up cows who could detect in no more than a few words the accent she so nearly had managed to completely lose now. But it didn’t take much for bitches like that to know she wasn’t one of them, not properly; just one misplaced vowel for them to curl their lips at her pretence.
Mary knew she could please John in ways those precious young ladies could never dream of. She might not be quite as porcelain-pretty as them, nor be able to recite a soupc¸on of Tennyson or Wordsworth, but she could care for this man, love this man. She could travel the world with this man and not complain that the sun was too bright or that the air was ‘too heavy for her constitution’ or that her pretty little feet ‘couldn’t take another step in these awfully tight shoes’. She could be a companion to him in so many ways. And wherever he came from in America, a slipped vowel, a dropped consonant, wasn’t going to mean a damned thing.
America.
She hoped so much that there was a way this game of hers could end with him whisking her away to such an exciting place. That come the return of his memories, she’d have managed to earn a permanent place in his heart.
‘. . . Polly? . . . Hmmm . . .’
She looked down at him, still fast asleep. Blood instantly drained from her face, leaving her paralysed, trembling with fear.
Polly?
A terrifying thought occurred to her. He has someone else.
She had visions of another woman, probably American like John, frantically worrying about her . . . husband? Wandering frantically from hospital to hospital trying to locate her man.
‘Oh, please . . . no,’ she whispered.
And Polly was this woman’s name.
All of a sudden, she realised this whole desperate scheme of hers was a foolish little bubble of hope, of make-believe, all paid for by money she’d stolen from him; a bubble long overdue to burst. Sooner or later, he was going to wake up in the morning and wonder who the hell she was and ask where in the world he was. That, or there’d be a knocking on the door and she’d open it to find that nice Dr Hart from the hospital flanked on either side by police constables, and one step behind a woman far prettier than her, far more sophisticated than her, with a face like thunder, and quite ready to press charges for the abduction of her husband.
Mary needed to find out more about him.
The only thing she had of his, the only trace of the man he’d been before someone had attacked him, was that leather satchel of his. And she was certain she’d searched it tho
roughly.
But perhaps she hadn’t. Maybe there might be something else in there: a letter, a note, a picture of a loved one. She was beginning to wonder whether finding all those folded pound notes had been all she wanted to find. That her probing fingers had chosen not to delve further or more thoroughly.
‘. . . M’dear . . . dear Polly . . .’ Argyll turned over on his side, still in a deep sleep, his broad shoulders rising and falling, his breath softly whistling from his nose pressed up against the pillow.
Go and look, she urged. She knew she wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep tonight unless she went down to the cellar and had another quick look in that satchel. Just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything in there.
Silently she left his bedroom and made her way down the old wooden stairs to the hall. A glimmer of shifting moonlight lanced through from the front room and by its faint light, she picked her way along the floorboards, past the flimsy hall table and the noisy brass clock Mrs Frampton-Parker insisted only she should dust because it was so fragile and expensive.
Mary stood beside the cellar door. There was a candle and a box of matches beside the clock. She picked them up, opened the cellar door and stepped inside onto the top step. Pulling the door closed behind her, she carefully set the candle down on the step, pulled out a match and struck it. In the momentary phosphorus flare she saw the bottom of the steps, the cracked and uneven stone floor below and the stack of travel chests.
The candle lit, she took the steps down to the bottom and crossed the floor to the travel chest where she’d stashed John’s satchel. That old thing. So worn and well-used, something she suspected he must have owned for years. Perhaps the bag itself might have his real name, his initials, stitched or written or branded on it somewhere? She hadn’t thought to look for that. She set the candle down, lifted the satchel out of the box and began to inspect it more closely. On the outside there was nothing but scratches and scrapes, a possession clearly very well used.
She lifted the buckled flap and her hands once again probed inside. By the flickering light of the candle, it was difficult to actually see inside, so instead she felt her way. There were the other bundles of notes tightly bound with string. She pulled them out one at a time and stacked them on the stone floor. She looked at the small pile of paper notes.
So much money!
The first night after she’d taken possession of this house, alone down here whilst John was still in St Bart’s with a couple of days more before he was going to be allowed to go home with Mary, she’d taken the money out and dared to count it. Five thousand pounds! An unimaginable amount. She’d felt dizzy with excitement at how much there was spread out on the floor in front of her . . . and how much more there might be if her daring scheme played out right.
Alone in this house, down in this cellar, she’d yipped with excited glee.
Now her hands probed back inside the bag. She could feel nothing else in the bottom. Just the folds of the cloth lining of the bag. But then her fingers provoked a soft, metallic clink.
Coins?
She waggled her fingers and heard the sound again. Something caught in the folds of the lining. Her fingers tangled with threads and then found a hole worn through the lining. She felt the coarse edge of the leather and a stitched seam. And then . . .
Clink.
. . . Something metal. Not coins. It felt like a key. She got hold of it and pulled it out, tugging with it the bag’s cloth lining, pulling it inside out. She untangled the threads of the lining from the key’s teeth. It was on a brass ring, along with a small brass fob with a number stamped on it.
207.
She shook her head that she’d been careless enough to miss this. But then it had fallen through the threadbare lining. It had been missable.
She studied the brass fob. 207. Not the number of a house, surely? If it was an address, there’d also be the name of a street or a road. It was a hotel key. She turned it over and over in her hands. A hotel key, but nothing on the fob to suggest which hotel.
She heard the cellar door creak softly on its hinges.
‘John?’ she called out.
She heard a foot fall on the wooden floorboard of the hallway, then the rasp of mucous-thick breath. Her heart lurched. She held her breath.
‘John! Is that you?’
No answer.
She picked the candle up and made her way to the bottom of the stairs. He was standing at the top, looking down at her with eyes that were blinking sleep away, unfocused. She took the steps up slowly as he stared at her silently. Closer now, Mary thought she could see something in the set of his face that looked like dawning realisation, more than a face waking up from sleep. It was a lost mind finding its way home.
Her mouth was suddenly very dry.
He knows. He knows! His memory’s come back!
She was about to say something, to fumble for some kind of desperate explanation as to why she was down here, who she was and why she was looking after him, when John’s mouth slowly flopped opened.
‘I . . . I . . . think . . . I’m . . .’ He cocked his head and frowned, looking quite confounded. Befuddled. ‘Is it morning yet?’
Mary could have almost laughed with relief. He was sleepwalking.
‘No, John.’ She smiled. ‘No, it’s the middle of the night still.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Oh . . . right.’ His dark hair fluffed up on one side, his face puffy with sleep and standing barefoot in his pyjamas, he looked like a small boy roused from sleep.
‘Come on, love, let’s get you back to bed.’
CHAPTER 24
30th September 1888, Holland Park, London
Argyll watched her lay the breakfast out on the table in the front room. She worked with quiet efficiency: tablecloth, crockery, coffee pot and finally bread, butter and a boiled egg. Not one word said, not even a smile. So unlike Mary.
What’s wrong with her?
‘Mary?’ he said, reaching out for her hand. She stopped her fussing and unnecessary fiddling with place mats and crockery. ‘Mary?’ he said again. ‘What’s the matter? Have I done something wrong?’
She looked so unhappy. So worried. Apparently anxious to talk about something but reluctant or unable to find a way to start.
‘Something’s the matter, isn’t it?’ he persisted.
She sat down at their breakfast table and looked out through the net curtains at the milk float clip-clopping past their house. ‘John . . . you were talking in your sleep last night.’
He smiled apologetically. Apparently he’d been doing it every night, according to her. The dreams he woke up in the morning with were little more than fast-fading wisps of disjointed imagery. They often seemed to be jam-packed with bits and pieces he couldn’t quite make sense of.
‘I’m sorry. Did I wake you again, Mary?’
She poured coffee from the pot; something for her fidgeting hands to do. ‘You said a woman’s name.’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you remember?’
Argyll remembered absolutely nothing. That was the problem. ‘No. I’m sorry, I don’t.’
She wanted to say the name – it was on her lips – but she was waiting to see if he could come up with it. He shook his head. ‘What was the name I said?’ he asked finally.
‘It was Polly.’
He stared down at the coffee he’d been stirring, the spiral of creamy milk twirling like a Catherine wheel.
Polly?
Like the rest of his lost life, the name meant absolutely nothing to him. But yet . . . the name triggered something in a shadowed corner of his mind. Just as the breaking crust of a stale loaf attracts a cloud of pigeons, or the smell of roasting chestnuts will pull an audience of hungry children, the name caused something in the darkest attic corner of his mind to uncurl from its roost and slide forward.
Polly? Hmmm?
‘I . . .’ He frowned, still watching his coffee spiral.
Polly, is it? That voice again. There was a harshness, an unkindness in it
s tone. Disapproval. Disappointment. Like an ambitious father let down by an unambitious son.
You know Polly . . . don’t you? Oh, yes, you remember Polly. The voice offered him a fleeting image, just a momentary flash. Dark red, splattered in commas and dots across skin as white as unbaked pastry; an opened-up cranberry pie.
He felt sick. He shook his head, feeling a headache coming on. The voice returned once again to its dark corner, to its roost, satisfied with its morning’s torment.
‘I . . . I honestly don’t recall a Polly,’ he uttered. ‘The name means absolutely nothing to me, Mary. Honestly.’ That half-lie tasted like bile in his mouth.
Mary tried to hide a look of relief from him. She acted busy, buttering him some bread. ‘Well, perhaps she’s an auntie or cousin or something. You know, back home in America?’
‘Yes, perhaps that’s who it is.’
He tapped the egg with his spoon, breaking its crown and scooping it off to one side of his plate.
‘How is it? The egg? Done how you like it?’
He kissed his fingers like an epicure. ‘Done to perfection, my dear.’
She giggled with delight at his saying ‘my dear’. The other day she’d told him the way he said those two words made him sound ‘all dashing an’ heroic, like one of them gentleman adventurers you read about in books’.
‘I never get my eggs right normally.’ She buttered some more bread and spooned jam generously on top if it. ‘John?’
‘Hmmm?’
‘I shall have to go to the shops for our supper again today. Is there anything in particular you fancy?’
Argyll stared at the open crown of the egg, his mind a million miles away. ‘Oh . . . uh . . . no, whatever you think is best, Mary.’
CHAPTER 25
15th August 1888, The Grantham Hotel, The Strand, London
