Robin Paige: Death in Hyde Park

Charlotte gave a small nod, not wanting to worry Adam, who had a tendency to be protective. Being dogged by the police wasn’t new to her-and it wasn’t just the British police, either. French and Russian agents swarmed all over London, and because the Clarion attracted the most radical of the Anarchists, it often attracted their attention, too. Since Ivan and Pierre were also being followed, perhaps someone thought that the three of them had something to do with Yuri’s bomb-that they were all involved in a plot. It was a sobering thought.

But Charlotte didn’t have time to worry about that now. “Tell Ivan I’ll be finished in fifteen minutes,” she said, going back to her desk.

“And then we’ll go out and get some lunch,” Adam said. “I have to be back at the union office at one.” He lifted his hand, gave her an affectionate smile, and went back down the ladder.

Charlotte sat down and pulled on her cigarette, thinking that if it were not for Adam, her world would be rather bleak. He wasn’t an Anarchist-in fact, his work for the railway union made him what Pierre sneeringly called a “reformist”-and he lacked Ivan’s disciplined hatred of the ruling class. But he believed that the way forward was to put as much power as possible into the hands of the laboring man, and he saw no contradiction between his work for the railway union and her work for the Clarion. He supported her, and worried about her, and was always there to lend a hand when the newspaper was going to press. If she had believed in marriage, Adam would have made a wonderful husband, but she felt that marriage was part of the bourgeois plot to confine women to their homes and keep them under control, and But that wouldn’t get the article corrected. Charlotte stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her pencil, and within ten minutes had finished the piece. She had been only a few days past her twentieth birthday when she became editor of the Clarion, and in the intervening five years, she had grown quite competent as a working journalist, able to crank out stories quickly. Of course, her work involved more than just writing. She’d had to learn how to set type, manage the small handpress, and deal with the many odd people-mostly men, many of them foreigners, and all of them revolutionaries of one stripe or another-who found their way to the Clarion’s office at the rear of Mrs. Battle’s green-grocer’s shop. She had also learned to make sense of the impassioned but irrational rhetoric that poured in a constant flood across her desk, submitted by any revolutionary who thought he could persuade the masses to overthrow the world’s governments. It was her skillful pen that refashioned these often indecipherable diatribes into something that might actually be accessible to the ordinary reader.

It was hard work, damned hard work, if she were honest with herself, and required her to do a great many things that a bourgeois woman, safe-harbored by husband and household, could never think of doing. She traveled frequently alone by rail and bus and bicycle, often at late hours, to attend meetings of political organizations, some of whose members, like Pierre, were more than a little mad. She had no time to pay attention to her hair or dress, and she slept many nights-when she slept at all-on a pallet on the floor of her loft-office, Ivan and the others working, drinking, and singing in the print shop below. And in addition to printing and distributing two thousand copies of the Clarion each month, she wrote and printed leaflets and booklets, helped to organize meetings, and occasionally found food and lodging for visiting foreigners. In this way, she felt, she was doing practical work for the Anarchist cause, work that might otherwise not be done, or done well.

Charlotte picked up the article and was heading for the ladder when she was startled by the sudden rattling thud of a door and the sound of glass breaking. “Where is your warrant?” she heard Adam demand angrily. “What gives you the right to-” And then there was a deafening metallic crash.

Charlotte caught her breath. She knew that sound, for this wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. The Clarion was being raided by the police, and someone had sent the heavy type form crashing to the floor, the loose lead type spilling everywhere. In a matter of seconds, a detective’s head and shoulders would pop through the opening in the floor, and Charlotte would be placed under arrest. It wouldn’t be the first time for that, either, and she had the awful suspicion that, given the violent anti-Anarchist mood sweeping the city, she wouldn’t get off with a fine and a stern lecture from the Police Court magistrate, as she had on other occasions. This time, she would go to jail, and her keepers would probably throw away the key.

There was another, muffled shout from Adam and a string of violent French curses from Pierre, and Charlotte knew instinctively what she had to do. Without hesitation, she stepped to the dormer window and pushed up the sash. Ignoring the rain that stung her face, she swung her left leg over the sill. On either side of the window, the slate roof sloped sharply downward for several feet, until it ended at a copper gutter. She gathered her bulky woolen skirt with a muttered curse (this would have been so much easier in trousers), swung her right leg nimbly over the sill, and eased herself onto the gutter, facing the roof. She could feel it give slightly, but it seemed firm enough to bear her weight-at least, that’s what she had thought when she’d watched the workmen putting it up the year before and decided that it might provide an escape if there was ever a fire in the building.

Now, balanced precariously, she moved carefully to the left, leaning forward at the waist, her left hand flat against the roof. With her right hand, she managed to yank the window sash down far enough so that it would not be apparent that she had escaped through it-although she seriously doubted that a man with as little imagination as a Scotland Yard detective would dream that a mere woman would clamber onto a roof three floors above the street.

Three floors. Giddily, Charlotte pushed the thought out of her mind. If she gave in to womanish fears, she’d be lost. Her mind carefully blank, her lower lip pinched tightly between her teeth and her palms flat against the wet and sooty slate, she inched awkwardly along the gutter. She had gone only a few feet when she heard a brusque shout from within, the sash was flung up, and a head popped out. Fearing discovery, Charlotte held her breath and pressed herself tight against the roof, her heart pounding like a trip-hammer.

“Well, she didn’t jump,” a disgusted male voice said. “Leastwise, I don’t see ’er down there. She must’ve sneaked out.”

“Don’t see ’ow,” a second man said, puzzled. “We’ve ’ad the entrances watched all morning. Inspector Ashcraft was most partic’lar about that. She came in at seven and ’asn’t come out since.”

“Well, she ain’t ’ere,” the first man said roughly, “unless she’s learnt ’ow to make ’erself invis’ble. Or maybe she’s learnt to fly. Ashcraft’ll be in a ravin’ paddy-wack about losin’ ’er.” Furiously, he slammed the window.

Pulling in her breath and willing herself not to look down to the street so dizzyingly far below, Charlotte began to move toward the corner of the building, sliding one foot at a time along the gutter, first her left, then her right, then her right again. It was hard going, made even more difficult by the rain that slicked the slate and the wet hair that fell across her eyes and Her foot struck an obstruction. There was a fierce squawk and a wild flurry, and suddenly something with beak and claws flew into her face, beating at her with hard wings. Terrified by the unexpected attack, she raised her arm to ward it off, almost losing her balance and pitching over backward. But as she swallowed a scream, she realized what had happened. A pigeon had built its nest in the gutter and she had dislodged it with her foot, sending nest and eggs hurtling down to smash in the street-as she would have smashed, if she had fallen, too.