The Forgotten Children

by Anita Davison

  Just then Alice appeared through the double doors with Lydia, whose arms were full of what looked to be soiled linens.

  ‘I really must go.’ Flora looked pointedly at his hand that still encircled her arm. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Releasing her, he took a step back, both hands held palms upwards in surrender.

  ‘What did he want?’ Lydia asked once Flora had reached them, her eyes narrowed at Dr Reid’s retreating back.

  ‘I’m not sure. Playing Sir Galahad, I think,’ Flora replied. ‘He offered to help, but I declined.’

  ‘He wasn’t bothering you, was he?’ Alice hard gaze followed him across the hall. ‘I didn’t like the way he grabbed your arm.’

  ‘Perhaps you have an admirer, Flora,’ Lydia said. ‘He’s quite a presentable young man.’

  ‘Don’t tease, Lydia.’ Flora rolled her eyes. ‘And it was nothing. Anyway we don’t have time to worry about him. We need to get to Swifty’s barge.’

  ‘We do?’ Alice frowned. ‘What about Mr Harrington and Inspector Maddox?’

  ‘Not good, I’m afraid. It appears the inspector has the enthusiasm but not the blessing of his superior. Bunny will do his best to persuade the river police to help us. They’ll meet us at the dock as soon as they can.’

  ‘They agreed to that?’ Lydia frowned, sceptical as she tossed the linens into a nearby laundry basket. ‘Even Bunny?’

  ‘I suggested we find out if the children are there and if so, wait for them to arrive.’ Flora avoided the question.

  ‘By the time they get from Camberwell to the dock in this fog, we could be there.’ Alice’s eyes darkened as she mulled the idea over. ‘It makes sense we should do some sort of reconnaissance if they are running out of time.’ She stood aside, making way for a porter with a trolley on which lay a girl of about ten who coughed alarmingly into an equally soiled handkerchief pressed against her mouth.

  Flora hesitated. Was she wrong to drag Alice away from where she was most needed? Perhaps Bunny was right and they should leave everything to the police?

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Flora.’ Alice released the door and stepped closer. ‘That I ought to be here, but my staff are very efficient and will cope without me. Right now, there are other children who need me.’

  Flora made up her mind. Either they waited and worried, or did what they could to find the children themselves. ‘All right. What do we do first?’

  ‘We’ll need some light to see by.’ Alice clamped her hands together. ‘It will be dark on the docks and the fog won’t help.’ She strode towards the front desk near the main entrance.

  ‘Is this a good idea, Flora?’ Lydia asked, as they waited for Alice whom they heard requesting some lanterns be fetched from the storeroom. ‘It’s not as if we’re equipped to take on a gang of villains.’

  ‘I’m hoping it won’t come to that.’

  Was she doing the right thing in encouraging Lydia and Alice to go rushing off into the fog with her? But what was the alternative? She had to do something, or this time tomorrow those children, and Sally could be mid-Atlantic. As always, she wavered between impulse and indecision as both took turns as her enemy.

  Chapter 27

  Once bundled up in coats, scarves and gloves retrieved from Alice’s office, Flora and Lydia returned to the entrance hall that was busier than it had when they left moments before.

  ‘A patient arrived in a hackney a few minutes ago.’ Alice scooped three lanterns from the desk in one hand by their metal handles. ‘A rare occurrence in this neighbourhood, so I’ve asked a porter to ask him to wait. We’ll light these when we get there.’ She shook a box of matches making the contents rattle, then slid it into her pocket.

  Flora stepped into the chill, fog-laden air, experiencing a pang of regret as the heavy double doors closed behind them. Her boots splashed through streams of water that flowed into the gutters as they hurried towards a blurred dark shape of the hackney, confirmed by a whinny and the scrape of a shifting hoof, the twin lamps fixed to the front making a valiant attempt to penetrate the greyish fog.

  ‘St Saviour’s Dock please, driver.’ Alice flung open the carriage door and placed the lamps on the floor. ‘It’s urgent, so please hurry.’

  ‘In this wevver?’ He raised his cap and scratched his head beneath it, sending a trickle of water down onto his saturated cape. ‘I woz on me way ’ome.’

  ‘It’s a mission of mercy,’ Alice pleaded. ‘We’ll pay you double.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so in’t first place?’ He retrieved the reins and mounted the step onto his perch. ‘Where do you want, Missus? Shad Thames side or Mill Street?’

  ‘Shad Thames will be fine, we can walk from there. It’s most obliging of you,’ Alice called up to him as they climbed inside.

  ‘I don’t blame him for wanting to be indoors on a day like this.’ Flora settled into an interior that gave of the pungent smell of old leather and stale tobacco smoke. She had barely sat down before the driver urged the horse through the wrought-iron gates and into the road.

  Although barely mid-afternoon, lamplighters were already out on the streets with ladders and tapers, a recent drop in temperature, combined with heavy rain precipitating more fires being lit belching gritty, dark smoke into the already misty atmosphere.

  A high-pitched whistle cut through the air as the black snake of a train leaving London Bridge Station careered along beside them before veering off into the dark, belching black smoke into the already congested air.

  Keeping the shadowy outline of Southwark Cathedral on their left, the hackney took a sharp right turn into the steep incline of Duke Street beside the approach to the railway station.

  Flora fidgeted with impatience as they rumbled into queues of traffic on Tooley Street, their slow progress giving her time to study the shop fronts as they passed; the majority of which were river-related. Chandlers, candle makers, ships biscuit-bakers, block-makers, and rope sellers jostled beside second-hand clothes stores, grocers and bakers. Shopkeepers had set out lamps and candles by their doorways to help light the way of the pedestrians who scurried past, their heads down, some gesturing in apology when collisions occurred, while others shouldered past without a backward look.

  ‘Of course!’ Lydia gasped, straightening. She leaned across Flora and let down the window, allowing a gust of rain-laden air rush into the interior of the carriage. ‘Driver, pull over.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Flora braced her arm on the doorframe, her thighs gripping the edge of the seat to prevent her falling, the lanterns on the floor clattering together with a chink of glass.

  Alice groped for the hand strap above her head as the horse halted at the side of the road, eliciting annoyed shouts and the blare of horns from other drivers.

  ‘The note.’ Lydia grasped Flora’s arm, her eyes wide and staring. ‘The one Abel took from Mr Buchanan.’

  The driver’s disgruntled face appeared at the window. ‘Wot’s wrong?’

  ‘Would you give us a moment?’ Lydia asked him, with a gracious smile.

  ‘Your money.’ His head disappeared again, though Flora distinctly heard him mutter the word, ‘women.’

  ‘I don’t have the note.’ Flora said. ‘Bunny took it with him to show to Inspector Maddox. Why?’

  ‘Apart from the date and time of departure of the SS Lancett, didn’t Bunny say there was something else written on it?’

  ‘The letters “TS” if I recall correctly.’ Flora shrugged. ‘But I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘I should have realized before.’ Lydia groaned. ‘I know where the children have been kept this last week.’

  ‘Of course.’ Alice slapped her thighs through her skirt. ‘The Tower Subway. Why didn’t I think of that? I used it regularly at one time.’

  ‘What’s The Tower Subway?’ Flora split a look between them.

  ‘It’s an old tunnel that runs beneath the river this side of Tower Bridge,’ Lydia said. �
�A train used to run along it, pulled along a track on a cable. It became too expensive to run so was closed down and turned into a walkway, but when the new bridge was opened ten years ago, it was closed down for good. No one wanted to pay a ha’penny to walk a mile beneath the river if they could cross an open-air bridge for free.’

  ‘You think they might have kept the children there?’ Flora asked.

  ‘Why not?’ Lydia shrugged. ‘It’s half a mile underground and practically disused, although I believe the London Power Company run cables along it now. There are still several hours before the ship leaves, so we could take a look there first.’

  Flora nodded, willing to try anything at this stage.

  Lydia poked her head out of the window and called up to the driver. ‘Change of plan. Could you drop us at the end of Vine Lane? It’s just before we reach Potter’s Fields.’

  ‘Right you are, Miss.’ The cab nudged into the steady stream of traffic, the driver ignoring a repeat of noisy protests of carts, vans and taxi cabs that filled the road on either side.

  ‘There’s another reason I believe they might have used the subway.’ Lydia pulled up the window with a bang. ‘It’s about a hundred yards away from The Antigallican.’

  ‘Surely that cannot be a coincidence.’ Flora’s pulse raced that they had a real connection between the pub Swifty used and Lizzie Prentice. Perhaps this wouldn’t prove to be a false trail after all? She clenched her fists on her knees and willed the driver to hurry.

  The cab had barely halted for a second time before they scrambled out onto the road, where the three of them rummaged through purses and pockets for change to cover the driver’s inflated fee. With a gap–toothed grin in response to Flora’s overly generous tip, he clucked his tongue at the horse and left.

  ‘The entrance to the tunnel is down there.’ Alice nodded to where a narrow alley stretched to the river bank, the flicker of gaslights reflected in wet cobbles that tailed away into the fog.

  She lined up the lanterns on a low wall, applied the lit end of a match to the wicks and handed one to each of them, the three of them set off into the fog, the orange glow of their lanterns swaying from side to side.

  Damp cold seeped through the thick wool of Flora’s coat, while drops of water fell onto her head and shoulders from broken gutters of nearby buildings as she trudged along after them, the collar pulled up around her neck as she tried not to think about the welcoming fire they had left back in Alice’s office at the hospital.

  The sour odour of silt, combined with coal smoke grew stronger as they got closer to the river, her scarf growing damper against her mouth as she breathed into it.

  The hairs on her neck prickled and she cast a fearful look behind her, unable to shake off the feeling they were being watched; the massive concrete supports of Tower Bridge loomed up on their right, the top half invisible through a curtain of mist. The blurred outline of the ancient Tower of London lay squat and forbidding on the far bank.

  ‘Hardly impressive, but this is the entrance.’ Alice paused beside a structure that resembled a kiosk with a pitched metal roof; not unlike the green-painted wooden boxes the hansom drivers gathered in for meals and work breaks. She swung her lamp in an arc that illuminated a low door bordered by metal rivets, giving it a tentative push which sent it swinging inwards. ‘Someone has been here recently. These hinges have been oiled.’ Alice’s lamp illuminated a metal staircase roughly seven feet across that dropped beneath them with no bottom in sight.

  ‘There used to be lifts here when the railway carried passengers.’ Alice peered over the rail into the darkness below. ‘They were taken out some time ago, so we’ll have to walk down.’

  ‘I suppose it was too much to expect the gas lights would still be working,’ Lydia said taking the lead.

  ‘Careful,’ Alice warned. ‘The steps are likely to be slippery.’

  Flora’s stomach lurched and she felt dizzy at the thought of venturing into a cold, dark tunnel on a damp winter afternoon when she could barely see a foot in front of her face. Suppose it was flooded from all the rain that had fallen in the last hours? The alternative was to wait there in the empty street, alone and with the possibility of the rain starting again.

  Flora placed her feet gingerly on the first step, and grasped the handrail with her free hand where the cold seeped through her glove. The sound of dripping water and the smell of mould and silt tickled her nostrils and brought back her fears of flooding. She bit her bottom lip, kept her gaze on Lydia’s lamp as it bobbed below her like a disembodied yellow ball as they descended in single file, the metallic ring of their feet on the treads resounding off the brick walls.

  ‘These steps have been swept at some point,’ Lydia’s voice drifted upwards. ‘Though as far as I know, it hasn’t been used in a while.’

  ‘The Thames is inches away on the other side of this wall, with just sand and heavy clay beneath us, though it’s been here forty years and hasn’t leaked once.’ Lydia chattered in a low whisper almost as if she was enjoying herself. Or was it bravado?

  Flora tried not to imagine the millions of gallons of dirty water in such close proximity, just as her foot slipped on the next step down. Her stomach lurched and she grabbed the handrail tighter to steady herself, pausing to release a long, relieved breath. What none of them needed was a twisted ankle. Or worse.

  It wasn’t long before Flora found her rhythm on the triangular steps, her confidence returned and she increased her pace, just as a shadow rushed past her foot, disappearing so fast she couldn’t be sure what she had seen. She froze. Was it a rat? No, she mustn’t think of rats.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Alice asked at Flora’s back.

  ‘I thought I saw—’ she broke off, listening, but the only sound that reached her was an intermittent drip of water and her own steady breathing. ‘It’s nothing. I’m fine.’

  ‘I think we’re too late,’ Lydia called up to them. ‘There’s no one here.’

  Flora’s gut churned with disappointment as she hurried down the last few steps to where the shaft opened out into a room roughly twelve feet square with a barrelled ceiling. The walls on either side contained a high-backed wooden bench like a church pew. Several candles in clay holders were scattered around the floor. Most of them had burned down to an inch or so, the flames doing little to lift the gloom. Lydia was right, the room was empty but for a blanket discarded in the middle of a bench.

  ‘This was once the waiting room before boarding the train.’ Alice moved slowly between the benches where thin mattresses covered with striped ticking had been arranged on the seats. On the floor at one end stood a chamber pot, which by the acidic smell had been used recently and not emptied; a stack of plates scraped clean of food sat on the floor beside it. ‘They were here.’ Alice held her lamp to shoulder height. ‘For some time by the look of it as these benches have obviously been used as beds.’

  A cool wind blew across Flora’s cheeks, and frowning, she lifted her lantern towards the far end of the room, and gasped. A vast circular hole took up the entire wall, opening into what resembled a metal tube that stretched away along the bottom of the river. Curved walls formed by circles of iron about two feet wide bolted together with rivets reached into a tunnel that undulated to the right, dipped down and up again, disappearing into the darkness.

  ‘It’s like walking into the bowels of the earth,’ Alice said, coming to stand at her side. ‘The floor moves beneath your feet so it’s quite a relief when you reach the waiting room at the other end.’

  Flora turned to face her. ‘How long is the tunnel?’

  ‘About a mile. The walls sweat and you could swear you can hear running water, but it’s just the echo. When it was used as a walkway, there were lights all the way along, but the feeling of being totally alone beneath the river is still daunting.’

  ‘I would hate it.’ Flora shuddered. ‘I don’t like enclosed spaces.’

  ‘Which tells us you’ve never been on the “tuppenny tube�
�?’ Lydia said from behind them.

  Flora shook her head. The first and only time she suggested they use it, Beatrice Harrington had made clear her aversion to going underground with crowds of what she called, “unwashed working people.”

  Flora nudged something with her foot, bent and retrieved a small metal object from the floor that she held beneath the lamp.

  A toy soldier.

  ‘We must have just missed them.’ She blinked away frustrated tears, turning the tiny figure over in her fingers, marvelling at the detail on the face. ‘Do you think Sally was here too?’

  Memories returned of the night Flora was locked in John Lange’s cellar, cold and alone. Had it not been for Sally’s quick thinking in calling the police before she too was caught, who knew what their fate would have been.

  ‘Oh, Flora, I’m so sorry.’ Alice gave her a one-armed hug. ‘Wherever she is, we have to believe she’s alive and well.’

  ‘I know, and I realize the children are the most important thing.’ Flora fought back welling tears, her voice scratchy. ‘But I so hoped we would find Sally here.’

  ‘How long ago do you think they were here?’ Lydia asked

  ‘Possibly the last hour or so as that leftover food is still relatively fresh.’ Alice sniffed the air, her head tilted to one side. ‘I can also smell laudanum.’

  ‘Let’s hope they haven’t been given too much,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s too easy to administer too high a dose.’ Flora turned to stare at her and she shrugged. ‘My mother needed it for pain towards the end. She hated it at first, said it was bitter. However, after a few weeks of regular dosing she began to like the taste. A bit like spicy apples, she said. I had to ration her carefully.’

  ‘Ruth Lazarus would know how much to use.’ Bitterness sharpened Alice’s voice. ‘She wouldn’t want to damage the children after all the trouble she went to taking them.’

  Flora remained silent, aware that Sister Lazarus represented a failure for Alice which rankled.

  ‘The dock is only a short walk from here.’ Lydia lifted the lamp up to shoulder height and adjusted the flame before making for the steps. ‘We’d better get going.’