by Alex Scarrow
‘This is London.’
The voice laughed at him. Most amused at his naïve answer.
No, you fool. This place, this world, is purgatory. You’re as blind as everyone else, aren’t—
‘Be quiet!’ Argyll slapped his hand against the table. A couple of coke-men on the table next to his, broad-shouldered with coal-black hands that left finger marks on their sandwiches, stopped mid-conversation and turned to look his way curiously. The waitress with the red raw skin and the crisp white apron bustled over.
‘Everythin’ awl-right, sir?’
Argyll looked up at her and looked around at the other eyes resting on him. ‘Uhh . . . yes, ma’am. Yes, I’m fine.’
‘Would you care for a top-up of your tea, sir?’
He looked down at the cup: old chipped porcelain, the blue and gold flower detail rubbed away on the handle. It was all but empty, the dregs of his tea long since gone cold. He realised he must have been sitting here for quite some time, gazing out through the window in some sort of a trance.
‘No . . . err, no ma’am, thank you. I’m fine.’ He fumbled in his pocket for some coins and pulled out a handful, frowning to make sense of them as he pushed them around the palm of his hand.
‘How much do I owe?’
She smiled sympathetically at his awkwardness. ‘Thruppence, farthing, sir.’
He picked at the coins, turning them over one after the other to read their value.
‘Shall I help you, sir?’ said the waitress. Argyll held his open hand out to her and she plucked out the coins. He thanked her before she turned to deal with the men sitting on the next table.
He pushed himself up from his seat, a piece of toast and a rasher of bacon left on his plate uneaten. All of a sudden, his appetite was gone. All of a sudden, he wanted to be back home. Back with Mary where things made sense. Their simple little world for two.
It was mid-afternoon by the time he clambered shakily up the steps to the front door. The noises of Holland Park Avenue, the faces, the confusion, and that hectoring voice had upset him. Confused and frightened him. He wanted to be back home. Somewhere safe and quiet and comprehensible. He saw the net curtain in the bay window of the front room twitch and a moment later the front door swung inwards.
‘John!’ cried Mary. ‘Oh, god help me, I was so worried about you!’
He smiled, pathetically pleased to see her, even if she was going to scold him like a small boy. ‘I went for a walk, and a spot of—’
‘You’ve been gone hours! I thought you’d left . . .’ Her voice caught. ‘I thought you’d got lost, forgot where we live!’
Her eyes were red-rimmed. She’d been crying.
‘I’m sorry, Mary.’ He reached for her arm. ‘I must have lost track of the time.’
She grasped his hand and all but dragged him into the hallway and slammed the front door shut behind him. Argyll swallowed nervously, expecting her wrath now. But instead he heard her breath catch and saw in the dim light that her shoulders heaving gently.
‘I thought you went and left me,’ she whispered.
He reached out to her. ‘I . . . I think I’d be so very lost without you, my dear.’ He said it and realised how much he meant it. He was at sea in churning waters, a turmoil of confusing, frightening memories and dreams that blew across his mind like a storm front. And Mary was the only thing standing still for him. A lighthouse, a beacon . . . a guttering candle.
Before either of them could utter another word, they were locked together hungrily, the hallway echoing their fluttering gasps, and the tac-tac-tac of the clock on the side table calmly measuring what remained of the little time they were going to have left together.
CHAPTER 31
8th September 1888, Whitechapel, London
Annie Chapman looked down Hanbury Street. She could still see another two of them beneath the gas light halfway down, chattering in noisy voices in the stillness of the early hours. She recognised their faces, even if she didn’t know them by their names. They were the last girls on the street, apart from her. No doubt forlornly hoping for one more customer before the sky started to lighten with dawn and the early-risers came for Spitalfields market.
Half an hour ago, they’d both spotted an old man staggering and tripping his way home. They’d caterwauled at him to come over, both lifted their skirts to show stocking tops and bare thighs in an attempt to entice him, but he was too far gone to even acknowledge them.
She sat on a low wall in a pool of darkness, far away from the nearest lamp. Normally, like those other two, she would gravitate to the glow beneath a lamp for the sense of safety it provided, but also to be able to show herself off to any passing potential customers. Tonight, though, she wanted to be entirely invisible until the morning returned and the streets were full and she could feel safe again.
And she so wanted tonight to hurry up and be gone.
Foolish. Stupid. She could have been tucked up in the relative safety of the lodging house she’s been using this last week. She’d bloody well paid for tonight with the last of her money, but then she’d had a fight with that bitch, Eliza, in the next room earlier this evening. A stupid fight that had flared up in mere seconds down in the washroom. A fight over a bloody bar of soap, would you believe.
Annie was inclined to agree the incident had been more her fault than Eliza’s, not that she’d admitted as much. So Annie borrowed her bar of soap and lost it and then Eliza had started accusing her of trying to steal it. Well, she’d lost control of herself and fists flew. The others there were unanimous in saying that Annie had thrown the first punch.
Possibly they were right. Annie wasn’t herself. Was very much out of sorts. In truth, she was a jangling skin of sharp-ended nerves. Ever since she’d heard the news that Polly Nichols had been knifed up. Quite horribly, if the Chinese whispers were to be trusted.
She was dead. That much was true. And then the morning after Annie had heard that news, one of the men in the lodgings, who bought the occasional paper, had spotted a small notice in the local reports. Just a couple of paragraphs.
Just another unlucky tart.
Polly was right, that’s what Annie realised now. Certain of it. ‘They’, whoever the hell ‘they’ were, were going to come for her next. Absently, she fingered her bag. All that she owned was in there: a comb, a nice piece of muslin, some cheap brass rings that her last man had bought her (just a few days before he’d kicked her out for another, younger, tart) and, of course, kept safe in an envelope she’d found in the lodging house – that picture.
It’s what they want, ain’t it?
She felt like the small, oval-shaped photograph of the young gentleman and that pretty French woman holding the baby was like a fox’s scent, drawing the hunting dogs. She was tempted to just tear it into little pieces and toss it away. In fact, several times she nearly had. But then that would do no good. Them hunting dogs would still come for her, photograph or not. She had to keep it with her for now. Keep it because, perhaps, somehow, she might be able to use it to bargain for her life.
Or . . . the other alternative. Take it to one of the newspapers, just like Polly had suggested she do the last time she saw her. Take it to one of them and, of course, ask for money. They were clever men who worked for the papers. They’d know exactly who the gentleman in the picture was. Oh, yes . . . there’d be some money for her. But the trick would be explaining how she had the picture. The trick would be in knowing how much to say. Certainly nothing about how she had played her part in making sure the pretty woman and the young baby were no more.
And if they did pay her some money – and not summon a constable to arrest her immediately for infanticide – it wasn’t going to be anything like the king’s ransom Bill had assured them they were going to get. But at least it would be something. But more to the point, if the story of this man’s indiscretion, and the picture to prove it, were in the press, then surely there was no point in setting the hunting dogs on her anymore. Right?
The man.
Oh, good god, the man. She thought she had an idea who it was now. Not a hundred percent certain, but it looked so very much like him. Images of him, both photographs and ‘artists impressions’, had been in a paper only this morning; an official visit he’d made to some cavalry barracks in Yorkshire. There he was, shaking hands, greeting young cavalry officers. The look of a carefree man whose troubles have all been taken care of for him.
The two girls further down Hanbury Street stepped out of the pall of light from the gas lamp and crossed the road together. Annie’s heart sank. Even though neither of them knew she was perched in the darkness up this end, they had felt like company. She watched them cross the narrow street from one pool of dim amber light to the one on the far side, their boot heels clacking and scraping as they passed beneath it and then finally disappeared from view down a rat-run between two rows of terraced houses.
All alone, Annie.
She wished she’d had just enough money to drink herself unconscious this evening, rather than tremble the night away. At least unconscious, if the shiv men found her, she’d take the blade in her sleep; not even know it had happened to her.
God help me.
Just tonight. Just the few hours left of tonight. That’s all she had to get through. She nodded. The gesture heartened her, firmed her resolve. Yes, tomorrow, that’s exactly what she was going to do: take it to the first newspaper building she came across on Fleet Street and then, money or no money, she was going to be done with this. Let them worry about what to do with that portrait of a man and woman in love; a small picture of Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Albert, with his French tart.
It takes patience. An immense amount of patience to do this sort of thing properly. Even so, Babbitt was beginning to wonder whether those two wretched tarts were ever going to move along. Whether, in fact, they were just going to stay rooted beneath that gas lamp until it was finally put out by the lamplighter and the morning was about its business.
He watched them leave and then returned his gaze to the low wall opposite. He knew Annie Chapman was sitting right there, utterly convinced she was invisible in the night. But he could just about see the faint, ghostly outline of her white bonnet bobbing in the dark.
The woman appeared to have no idea she’d been watched all evening. He’d picked up on her at just gone eight when she’d wandered into the Swan, asking around for favours, offering herself more cheaply than she would have normally on account of the bruises and scratches on her face. But all poor Annie had received were shaking heads, and the all too predictable grunted, single-syllable abuse from those shaved and clothed monkeys.
Savages, animals, these people.
What was it his tutor had once told him? A long time ago now, back in better times, the innocent time of childhood. Back before his family undertook their doomed trek across God’s wilderness. Before the Indians. Before that shaman had showed him his calling.
What was it his tutor said?
‘It is the capacity for acts of genuine kindness that separates humans from the animals.’
He remembered that insight so well, even being so young. Remembered looking at the world slightly differently thereafter and categorising people he met as either animals or humans based on their capacity for altruism.
He remembered a hectic summer, full of packing and preparations. 1858. His father had decided fantastic business opportunities awaited him on the far side of America, even though his various businesses were doing a healthy trade in New York. It was a place called Oregon that he was certain would make him rich. So the whole family was going, with just their dearest heirlooms. Everything else was for sale.
That summer, only nine, he’d been a silent observer, judge and juror for the procession of people who entered his parents’ parlour to wish them bon voyage, or enquire about a business detail. He’d silently judged them on the simplest, most casual gestures. A tradesman who might enter the house, see him standing in the foyer and offer him a friendly wink before going to talk to his father – human. An opportunistic salesman looking to take advantage of his father’s distracted mind and sell him snake oil and other worthless medicines for the journey ahead – animal.
He still played that game from time to time. Watching people and how they treated each other. But the game always seemed to produce the same results. Animal after animal after animal.
The humans were all long gone. All animals now.
He sighed, straightened his stiff legs as he stood up and began to slowly cross Hanbury Street.
CHAPTER 32
8th September 1888, Whitechapel, London
Annie thought she heard the light tapping of shoe soles across the street.
‘Hello?’ She got up off the low wall. ‘Hello? Someone there?’
Then it was gone. She chided herself for being so silly and jumpy. If it was anything, it was a fox. Those animals practically owned the streets once humankind had gone to bed. She slowly sat down again on the wall, praying for the last few hours of dark to hurry up and end. The faint peel of a bell chimed the hour: it was four in the morning. Another hour and the first workers would be getting up, making the street a safer place for her once more. And half an hour after that, the sky would be a pallid grey, and even here in White-chapel, one or two foolhardy birds would have some desultory tune they wanted to sing.
Annie was feeling hopeful about today. Just a few more hours and then she was going to make her way west, towards the City and Fleet Street. And who knows? Perhaps she was going to be enjoying a hearty breakfast of sausages and bacon, with money in her bag for the story and the picture.
She heard the soft brushing of movement – cloth swishing against cloth.
Right behind her.
She’d just started to turn around when she felt a hand roughly mash her lips against her teeth, her nose pinched firmly, someone pulling her back off the low wall. She landed on her back in a small yard, looking up at a very dark sky. She tried screaming into the palm, hoping in the stillness of the night that the other two girls might still just about hear her cry. But the best she could muster was a muffled whimper.
‘Best to be quiet now, Annie Chapman.’ A gentle whisper from above. ‘I don’t wish to use the knife, but I shall if I need to.’
She felt something sharp probing her left ear and recoiled from it. ‘Be still now. That’s the tip of my blade in your ear. One little push and it’ll be through your eardrum as if it were a pie crust and into your brain in no time.’
She stilled herself immediately.
‘I’m going to remove my hand and you and I are going to talk. If you’re a good, helpful girl, Annie, you’re going to walk away with some money in your pocket. If you’re not . . .’ There really was no need to finish that.
She nodded.
Babbitt lifted his hand off her lips. ‘Annie, dear Annie. Things are not so good for you, are they? You should be tucked up in a bed at this hour of the morning.’
‘G-got no money.’
‘Hmmm, I suspected that. No business for you this evening?’
Her mouth opened; she wanted to say something.
‘Go on, what is it?’
‘Are y-you . . . are you . . . ?’
‘Am I the one who killed Bill? Polly?’
No point lying to her. She’d guess. More importantly, he needed to earn a little of her trust right now; he needed to give her a toe-hold of hope. Sense the possibility that co-operation with him was a way out for her.
‘I won’t lie to you, Annie. Yes, regretfully that was me. They weren’t as helpful as I’m hoping you’re going to be.’
‘You . . . you want that l-locket b-back?’
He shrugged and smiled, not that she could see his lips in the gloom, but she could hear it in his voice. ‘Oh, I have that already. Lovely little piece, isn’t it? I had a goldsmith look at it. Very nice piece. No, it’s not that I’m after, Annie.’
‘The p-picture . . . the picture ins
ide! I got it! I got it right on me!’
She seemed so very keen to talk. The blade tickling her ear lobe was helping, of course.
‘In me bag!’ she gasped. ‘R-right ’ere in m-me bag!’
He looked down at the threadbare floral printed bag on the muddy ground beside her in the small yard. He reached for it and tipped it out beside her head. ‘My dear, I presume these are all your worldly possessions?’
She nodded.
‘Not really very much to show for a lifetime on this earth, is it?’ he asked as his fingers picked through the meagre offering of personal effects scattered beside her.
‘I ’ad me own ’ome once,’ she replied.
Babbitt smiled at her distractedly. ‘Really?’ The poor woman was showing some spirit, some shrewdness, talking to him like that. Trying to build a relationship with him in the few moments she had left.
Clever girl.
‘I ’ad an ’usband, an’ me b-babies, an ’ome, n-nice things an’ all,’ she continued.
‘But somewhere it all went wrong, did it, Annie? Hmmm?’
‘Me daughter d-died an’ . . . an’ me an’ ’im split . . . an’—’
‘And you took to drink, and then, finally, whoring, to pay for the drink?’
‘Y-yes.’
He sighed. ‘It’s a horrible world, isn’t it, Annie?’ he replied as his fingers found a folded envelope. It rustled as he probed hopefully inside. ‘Ahhhh . . . now this feels promising.’
‘I . . . I kept it s-safe.’ She swallowed anxiously. ‘The m-man in the picture . . . I think it’s—’
‘Someone very important?’
She nodded quickly.
‘Of course it is. That’s why they’ve paid for someone like me to come and find it. Can’t have “the great and the good” looking as fallible and immoral as the rest of us lowly peasants now, can we?’ From inside his dark coat he pulled out a small candle and set it carefully on the ground. ‘That’s supposedly what sets them apart from us lot; the riff-raff. Why they have the nice things, the privileges. Because they’re meant to be a cut above common folk.’
