The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  Kell froze in shock. Wiggins pushed him away, eyes on the two toughs all the while. The floored man spat and spluttered, but they did not follow.

  “How dare they speak to me like that?”

  “This ain’t Whitehall,” Wiggins said as he steered Kell through a flurry of leering streetwalkers. “Them’s a pissed-up crowd.”

  Kell nodded, shaken.

  Wiggins glanced back as they turned into the grandeur of Regent Street. That was London all right. Big shops, bright lighting, fancy motors, top hats, all cheek by jowl with poverty and desperation and violence.

  He felt the rosary in his pocket and thought back to the Embassy that morning. An odd setup. The pale girl, Poppy, and that lingering look; Martha and her heavy bottom lip, the arch in the eyebrow; not to mention the madam running the shop. And strangest of all, Tommy.

  Tommy had been a scrap of a boy when Wiggins last saw him, twenty years earlier, when they both worked for Sherlock Holmes as Irregulars.

  “Wall-to-wall clicks out there, I’m telling ya.”

  Young Tommy had poked at the brazier in the disused railway arch at Paddington that doubled as the Irregulars’ home. Wiggins and his best friend, Sally, had been running the gang for years by this time, picking up commissions from Sherlock Holmes, as well as odd jobs out of Fleet Street and the occasional click here and there when the wolf was growling.

  Just the two of them when they’d started working for Holmes, over the years their number had swelled to around the ten mark, give or take. A ragtag of orphans, street kids, and even a Scouse scally abandoned by an uncle, they rubbed along pretty well, with Wiggins as the oldest. All except Tommy. He’d been quiet enough to start with but now, a year or so after joining, he was starting to get mouthy.

  “Easy, ain’t it,” Tommy went on. “They’s too upset to notice me. Wait outside the prick’s place, dip ’em every time.”

  “Not in the old man’s backyard. You can’t steal from his clients. It ain’t right.”

  “You what?”

  Wiggins reset his feet. He had a couple of years on Tommy—fourteen to his twelve or thereabouts—and he had height and weight. But Tommy had a temper—and a hot poker in his hand.

  They eyed each other over the brazier. The poker glowed. A few of the younger ones stood around, watching. Wiggins could feel their nerves. In the far corner, Sally snoozed. At least, she pretended to. “It ain’t right,” he said at last. “We’s work for the old man.” He looked around the archway at the dirty faces turned toward him, the urchins—his urchins. “Sherlock Holmes, he’s famous he is, the best detective who ever lived, and we’s his eyes and ears. And we don’t steal. Not whiles we work for him.”

  “You the boss, are ya?”

  “I am.”

  Tommy spat into the fire, tugged at his shirt. “Ain’t my boss. I dip who I like.”

  Wiggins took a step closer. He felt a ripple go through the others, sensed Sal’s eyes on him—even though she still pretended to snooze, he knew she was watching. But she couldn’t help him now. The Irregulars were a gang like any other; like the pack dogs out Royal Oak way, they followed the leader. And he was the leader. “You can’t stay here, Tommy—not if you’re leafing.”

  “Piss off.” He turned toward his bed. Wiggins grabbed him by the arm.

  In an instant, Tommy swung his free hand around and into Wiggins’s face. The blow glanced off his chin. He sidestepped to avoid the second fist, which flew wide.

  But Wiggins’s foot caught the brazier, splaying sparks and embers across the floor in a great crash. He stumbled to the ground.

  Tommy grasped the poker and turned toward him. Wiggins saw Sal leap up and run to put out the flames. The younger ones stared in shock, unable to move.

  “I’m earning money, boys.” Tommy looked around at the rest. “We could earn buckets if we work together, I’m telling ya.”

  Wiggins leapt up and in one movement punched him clean in the face, sending him to the floor. Dazed. Wiggins leaned down, picked up the fallen poker, and handed it gently to Sal.

  “You did your best,” she muttered. The rest of the Irregulars, even the ever-talkative twins, stared, silent and cowed.

  Tommy forced himself up and glared. He rubbed his chin, tears welling. “You fool. It ain’t fair and you know it. We live in a shit pit, working for the old man. What for? Just so you can toady up to the ‘great detective’? I’m getting out.”

  “There’s the door then.”

  Tommy pulled his coat from a cot and slunk away. He turned at the entrance to the archway and flicked Wiggins a defiant V with his fingers. Wiggins scowled. He didn’t see anything wrong with working for the old man. At least it was work.

  Wiggins’s job now, so it seemed, was to accompany his boss to the gun shop.

  Kell looked up at the rows of gleaming firearms in Purdey’s as Wiggins stood one step behind. A sales clerk oozed his way over to them, lizard-like, pomaded.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  Kell pointed to a rifle with a peculiar, ornate sight. “I’ll try that one,” he said. The assistant nodded.

  Wiggins shook his head slightly at the clerk. Kell turned to him and went on. “We need to talk about assassination.”

  “In a gun shop?” Wiggins said, although he was looking behind Kell at the assistant. He had his hand up to the gun and was looking over. Wiggins used his eyes to nudge him to a rifle three over, and the man nodded his assent.

  “Don’t be flippant. I am giving you a commission. You complain constantly about working in the provinces—well, here’s your chance to stay in London. Is this the gun I asked for?”

  “Try it, sir.” The assistant bowed his head. “This is perhaps the perfect weight for you.”

  Kell hoisted the gun onto his shoulder.

  “You want me to kill someone?” Wiggins hissed.

  “I’ll take it,” Kell said. “Have it sent over with fifty rounds to this address.” He then marched out of the shop, Wiggins at his heels.

  Back on the street, Kell turned south and continued. “The prime minister fears assassination.”

  “Squiffy’s got the jitters.”

  “He’s not scared for himself,” Kell snapped. “Every major monarch in Europe will be there, presidents, the lot. The prime minister . . .” Kell glared back at Wiggins as he said this. He wasn’t having him refer to the man as Squiffy, for all that Asquith liked a drink. Not in his presence anyway. “. . . He is most concerned about the threat of political assassination.”

  A fire engine sped past, its bell clanging, the helmets gleaming in the May sunshine. They were at the corner of Berkeley Square and Kell was swiveling around, looking for a cab.

  “The King’s funeral will be the political event of the century, everyone will be here.” He glanced at Wiggins as a master would turn to a servant. “This is why I brought you back. I want you to highlight any weak points on the route. You know the streets better than anyone.”

  Wiggins frowned. “Who’d be taking a pop? Who’re they worried about?”

  “Anarchist gangs, probably,” Kell said, then hailed a hansom cab. He didn’t like the motorized taxis, or their meters. He got in, left the door open, and gestured curtly for Wiggins to join him.

  “But that’s for Special Branch to deal with. Victoria Street!” he shouted at the cabby, then turned to Wiggins. “We have a far more pressing problem.”

  Wiggins’s face was still clouded with thought. “Special Branch, you say? You got access to their files?”

  “That’s none of your business. None of our business. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, sir, skipper, sir, aye aye, sir.”

  “You may think you’re amusing but we’ve got a big problem. There’s been a leak in Whitehall. From the Cabinet minutes. And it’s down to us to find out who.”

  Wiggins shifted in his seat. “Suspects?”

  “The departmental clerks.”

  “Blame it on the workers, eh?” Wiggins s
hook his head. “Could’ve been anyone.”

  Kell sighed theatrically. “So you’d rather I sent you to interrogate the home secretary?” The cab burst onto Victoria Street and he directed the cabby to the office. “No. You will discount the clerks, understand—one by one.”

  They got out of the cab. “Ain’t it just gossip? What’s the big to-do?”

  “The big to-do is that this leak cost us a valuable treaty. And who knows what other information has gone missing. Lives are in danger. How would you like it if you went into battle and the enemy knew your exact movements, even before you’d made them?”

  Wiggins shrugged. “It could take months.”

  “Which is why we’ll start immediately,” Kell said, gesturing to the office. “We’ll get you the clerks’ details, and you’ll be out on the streets tomorrow.”

  “Tomorra’s Sunday.”

  “And?” Kell raised an eyebrow. “Are you due in church?”

  4

  “In nòmine Patris et Filii et Spìritus Sancti.”

  “Amen.”

  “Gràtia Dòmini nostri Jesu Christi, et caritas Dei, et communicàtio Sancti Spìritus sit cum omnibus vobis.”

  “Et cum spiritu tuo.”

  The priest went on. Wiggins stood near the back, on the outside aisle, and looked up into the vaulted ceiling. Incense wafted over the heads of the congregation, catching in his nose.

  He ducked his head briefly and sauntered down the aisle. A couple of people turned, but most took no notice. He didn’t understand the words, but they sounded both comforting and, somehow, sinister. Like a violent father, familiar yet dangerous. Was his own father a Catholic?, he wondered as he took a seat next to a solitary worshipper. The old girls down Marylebone Lane used to say he had the look of the Irish about him. (No one ever said he had the luck.) It didn’t matter.

  The priest started doling out the body of Christ, or whatever it was they did, and the young woman next to Wiggins pushed past him to take her turn. He looked up at the imagery above the altar. No master, no God. That’s what Peter the Painter believed, that’s what he’d told him the year before—before Bela, before the bomb, before that bullet in the shoulder.

  He was due to meet Jax later that day, up near Petticoat, to see if she’d found out anything about Peter, but something else tugged at his mind, something that Kell had said about the anarchist gangs and the King’s funeral. Maybe he needed to go to the police. The young woman he’d sat next to came back down the aisle toward him.

  She took her seat and they both knelt down. He handed her back her rosary, dropped for him to find on the floor of the Embassy kitchen.

  “Thanks, mister,” she whispered. “Looking for Millie, ain’t ya?” She cast a shy glance at him, her face an ivory white, her movements nervous.

  “Poppy?”

  “You ain’t no rozzer?”

  Poppy was young, younger than he’d first thought, barely of age. Wiggins didn’t smile at the foolishness of the question. He shook his head gently. “Asking for a friend.”

  She fiddled with the rosary, her head down, avoiding his eyes. Wiggins could feel her agitation. Her legs quivered beneath her long skirt. She was dressed properly, not like the day before at breakfast with the other whores. Every now and then her hand shot up to a red ribbon tied around her neck.

  “What do you want to tell me?” he said softly.

  “How ya know I wanted to tell you anything?”

  Wiggins nodded at the rosary. “Left that for me, didn’t ya? Knew you’d either be here or at St. Matthew’s. Them’s the Catholic shops local.”

  She jerked her head. “Just cos I’m a whore, don’t mean I can’t be a Catholic. I believe.”

  “I know.” Wiggins waited. The other congregants had begun to rise, gathering belongings, staring up at the cross hanging above the altar and at the stained-glass window beyond, doing the old spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch. He couldn’t push too hard; she’d scare easy.

  Poppy glanced around her. “She had a Fred.”

  “Her boyfriend’s named Fred?”

  “Nah. That’s what we call the sweet ones, Freds.”

  “Sweet ones?”

  She clasped her hands, distracted again. “Who are ya? Can you help me?”

  Wiggins tensed, unsure. “What you mean, sweet ones?”

  “We’re whores. Some of the men get sweet.” She got to her feet suddenly and shivered. “Millie had a new Fred, that’s all I know.”

  Wiggins grabbed her wrist, covered by the tight sleeve of her dress. “Nothing else? A name?”

  “They’s all Freds,” she said plaintively. “I gotta go.”

  “But—”

  “I shouldn’t’ve said nothing.” She reached her hand up to her face. An old woman passed, glancing at them through narrowed eyes. Wiggins took a step back, ducked his head.

  “People come and go in this business,” Poppy whispered. “I just thought you might . . .” Her eyes drifted away and she lost her thread.

  “What?”

  She sniffed. “Half the girls end up at the ferry,” she muttered under her breath and then stepped away.

  He tried to call her back. “I’ll come again,” he hissed. “Sundays.” But he wasn’t sure if she’d heard.

  He watched as the last of the worshippers filtered out of the church. Poppy flitted among them, carried forward like a scrap of rubbish on the river, and then she was gone. He looked up above the altar once more, the stained-glass image of a mother and child. H, H, get me the bottle. G’arn, son. Another nip won’t hurt.

  Wiggins shook the memory away. He didn’t cross himself, but turned to the back of the church. At that moment, and only for an instant, he saw her standing at the doors. She’d obviously been watching him, but she ghosted away as soon as their eyes locked. Tall, well dressed, commanding, black curls tumbling from beneath her hat, it was the other woman from the Embassy, the one with the dark skin and arched eyebrow. It was Martha.

  “It will be the greatest coming together of royalty the world has ever known. Not even in the days of Charlemagne, nor even Solomon himself, has such regality been visited in one place.”

  A silence greeted this. “Right-ho,” Soapy said after a moment. “I think we’re all here. Including the home secretary.” Soapy nodded at Churchill. “Who has so graciously set the scene. Sir Edward Henry, commissioner of police, will you take us through the details?”

  While Wiggins sat in church that Sunday morning, Kell worshipped at a different altar. He stood with his back to the wall and surveyed the crowded Cabinet briefing room. Although the meeting had been hastily convened, everybody wanted a piece of this operation, wanted to be part of the funeral arrangements. Everyone wore black. Kell was still too junior for a seat at the table. All the big men of the Cabinet, bar the PM, sat with their assistants behind them. The red ribbons binding their ministerial papers provided the only dash of color in the room. Sir Edward Henry was at one end of the table. Next to him, Sir Patrick Quinn, head of Special Branch.

  Quinn had come into the room with Sir Edward. He’d raised an eyebrow in surprise on seeing Kell—he didn’t nod so much as look amused, knowing. Every now and then he glanced at Kell with the same half-amused, half-questioning look.

  Sir Edward Henry began his briefing. He outlined the proposed route of the funeral procession intended for the following week. The exact details were to be kept secret from the public, for fear of disturbance, in particular the route it would take through the small streets and poor areas around Paddington Station.

  “On the day, we will have officers from half the forces in the south of England, as well as the City of London Police,” Sir Edward concluded. “I anticipate more than a thousand policemen will be in attendance.”

  Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary himself, raised a hand. Kell noted the immaculate collar, his black suit without a hair on it. His cuffs gleamed white. His hair, silver but full, was perfectly trimmed—as if he’d left the barber
only minutes ago. He had two aides with him, one sitting and one standing next to Kell, both similarly turned out—perfectly dressed, sleek, pinstriped. Most of the men of Whitehall picked up at least some evidence of dirt or soot, of living in the city, even if it was only a stray feather attached to the sole of their shoe. These men, the men of the FO, floated through the world untouched.

  “I think, gentlemen, that we must get to the matter in hand. I have at least thirty-two ambassadors whose nerves are frayed. And once frayed”—Grey said the word as if it were the worst thing imaginable—“they come to me to have them restored. Security. What are the plans to guarantee the safety of our overseas guests?”

  “Quite right,” Sir Edward Henry nodded, cowed. He gestured to Quinn. “Sir Patrick Quinn of Special Branch, gentlemen.”

  Quinn stood up, glancing again at Kell for a second. No sign of nerves, damn him, Kell thought, not even in front of the cream of Whitehall, the de facto government, bar Asquith himself. “Look at that, cool as you like,” the young aide from the FO whispered to Kell. An ally.

  “My lords, gentlemen. We have special-protection officers on every member of the royal family.” Quinn droned on with the details. Kell’s eye wandered back to the young man next to him. Even his handkerchief, a brilliant white against the night-sky black, was monogrammed with H M-B in fine golden thread. Too much money in the diplomatic, he thought. Perhaps Constance would talk to him if he had more money—but then she didn’t want for money, never even mentioned the stuff. He turned back to Quinn, who was reveling in his time in the sun. Quinn glanced at him again.

  Did he know about the photograph? Had he placed Constance at the scene? And what was the bloody scene anyway, where had she been? And with whom?

  “You seem very sure of everything, Sir Patrick,” Soapy said. “You have no fear of assassination?”

  “We are confident we know all the main players who could even contemplate such a thing, sir. The Republican Army—”

  “You mean the Fenians?”

  “Right you are, sir. The Irish Republican Brotherhood won’t come to town. It’s too sensitive, too much respect for the deceased, you see.”