Стефани Баррон - A Flaw in the Blood

Fitzgerald paid a boy loitering in Hemingford Road to carry a message to Mrs. Russell's door at seven-thirty that morning. The police might be following him, despite his wariness—and he had no wish to incriminate Georgie. But it was Mrs. Russell who answered his summons, her broad pink face suffused with worry. She climbed up into the hansom to give him the news.

“Arrested,” she said, “when we'd no sooner sat down to our supper. An information was laid, the Bobby told me—though as to who laid it, he would not breathe a word! Abortion! And her doing her sainted best to see those poor women comfortable, whichever way she can, and never mind the cost to herself. What would the dear doctor say, Mr. Fitzgerald, had he lived to see this day?”

You didn't keep her safe, Patrick, John Snow's voice muttered once more in his ear.

He tried desperately to ignore it. He tried to throttle Snow's ghost, to quell his strident conscience, but the voices kept ringing. Theo's. Maude's. Georgie's. All saying the same thing: You didn't keep me safe.

He could not silence them now, but he could push onward through the rising clamour, to Victoria Station where Gibbon was waiting, cautious newspaper raised, in easy view of the Portsmouth train.

“She goes before the magistrate today,” he told him, “in Bow Street. I can't appear for her, Gibbon—I'd only get myself thrown into gaol. But I can find Button Nance. I can force that woman to tell the truth. Will you help me?”

Jasper Horan fingered the telegram in his coat pocket. It was the first he'd ever received, and the printed lettering on the stiff yellow paper made him feel important, as though he'd joined the ranks of civil servants and army officers, men too important for mere letters in the post. The telegram had come yesterday, direct from the Dover packet office to the City warehouse where Horan was employed as head watchman. Von Stühlen's name at the end of the brief message.

His instructions were clear: Proceed to Miss Armistead's house in Russell Square and watch the premises for any sign of the lady's arrival. Then report the same to von Stühlen. Horan was not, under any circumstances, to let Miss Armistead slip through his fingers.

He'd told the tea merchant who paid his wage that he was sickening for a fever. He'd hailed a hansom for Russell Square and spent the next four hours and twenty-three minutes watching the premises in question. The house appeared deserted, and Horan had almost given it up as a bad job—when a hired fly rolled to a stop at Miss Armistead's door. The driver had stepped down, and conferred with the personage who answered his ring. After a wait of perhaps ten minutes, the horse stamping and the driver pacing in the cold, a maid appeared with a packed carpet bag, which she handed into the fly. The driver mounted the box—shook up the reins—and put Russell Square immediately to his back.

Horan, by this time, had engaged a cab and was hot in pursuit. He trailed the fly to Albion Grove, where another maidservant retrieved the carpet bag. It was a simple matter, after that, to report Miss Armistead's whereabouts to von Stühlen.

It was Horan who had the pleasure of summoning the police.

The rookery in St. Giles was colder than it had been three weeks before, but the same smell of cats and unwashed bodies permeated the entryway, and the same cluster of children was draped along the stairs.

A stranger answered the door of Button Nance's rooms: a faded woman with a jaw like a bear trap. She had no interest in Fitzgerald and no time to spare for the dead.

“Fell off Waterloo Bridge,” she told them briefly, “couple o' nights back, when she'd took a bit too much; and the little'uns gone to the work'us. No loss, I reckon. She were a vicious ol' bitch and 'ad the pox in 'er.”

The workhouse belonged to St. Paul's, the actors' church in Covent Garden, and it was a small matter for Fitzgerald and Gibbon to inquire after the children. Three little girls were pointed out among the welter of grey-clad orphans working the parish mangle; of the boy, Davey, there was no sign.

“Lemme talk up the lads what sweep the crossings,” Gibbon suggested. “They'll know summat, I reckon.”

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Georgie would be brought before the magistrate at two. Fitzgerald gave the little girls a shilling each, and left the steaming laundry for the throngs of idle and savage boys who haunted the nearby market.

Davey had never gone back to Button Nance's after Lizzie died.

He took to working the Oxford Street omnibus line from Edgware Road to Bishopsgate: swinging up onto the platform with the crowd of working-class men each morning, and pinching a pocket or two before leaping off into the darker byways. When another 'bus came by, he repeated his performance, the wallets and purses tossed each time to the guv'nor what kept him fed, in an attic room full of similar boys, deep in the heart of his old rookery. Davey had quick, delicate fingers and agile legs; the work came easily and paid better than sweeping crossings. He lived now only four streets away from St. Giles, in a warren of windowless and airless rooms lined with pallets, where he slept most nights; days he spent on the street. Twice, he had glimpsed his little sisters in the St. Paul's workhouse yard; but it did not do to stare at them too long. They might notice Davey, and call out—and Davey had vowed never to be taken alive into the parish workhouse.

He was standing on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, eyeing an approaching 'bus that looked sadly empty so close to the noon hour, the wet straw of the inner compartment sifting dirtily down the platform steps, when a hand clapped him on the shoulder. Instinctively, he twisted free and darted to one side—straight into Fitzgerald's arms.

“Wotcher,” he snarled. “I ain't done anyfink. Lemme go!”

It took both of them to carry the struggling boy into a nearby public house, and it was only when Fitzgerald threatened to turn him over immediately to the police that he stopped calling loudly for help and grudgingly agreed to accept their offer of small beer and a pasty.

They sat with Davey firmly between them, Gibbon holding the boy's left wrist. Fitzgerald waited until he had devoured most of his meal before he even attempted to get the boy's attention; he had known that look of starvation intimately before.

“Would you like another?” he asked, and when Davey nodded, his mouth too full to speak, Fitzgerald jerked his head at Gibbon. “You order. I'll be all right. The lad won't run while we feed him.”

When the valet stepped cautiously away from the table, a look of misgiving on his face, Fitzgerald told the boy, “I'll give ye a pound for an afternoon's work. That's money you won't have to share with anyone else—provided you keep it hidden.”

Davey raised his eyes from his empty plate and studied Fitzgerald narrowly. “You're the toff what came with the lady,” he said. “When Lizzie was sick. Afore she died. But you're not a swell no more. I reckon you ain't got a pound between you, you and the other cove what calls you mister. ”

Fitzgerald drew the note from his pocket and held it in front of Davey's face. “I don't keep my wallet in my coat, so don't get any ideas. This is yours—provided you earn it.”

“Wot's yer lay?” Davey demanded.

“Justice,” Fitzgerald said softly. “For your sister Lizzie. And the lady who tried to save her.”

A shadow passed over the boy's face and his eyes slid away. For perhaps thirty seconds, he weighed Fitzgerald's words. Then, without warning, he darted out of his seat and shot like lightning for the public-house door.