‘Not since then?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  Ripley popped his knuckles and turned to Pallett. ‘Show him.’

  Pallett reached into his bag and pulled out a black coat. He turned the label towards me. It read: Leo Stanhope.

  My mind seemed to shrink back from my skull.

  Ripley leaned forward. ‘You said you last saw Coffey on Thursday in Whitehall. Did you lend him your coat?’ He fished into the pocket and pulled something out. It was my door key. ‘And invite him to your lodging?’

  I clasped my fingers together on my lap and answered calmly, in the manner of an honest man explaining a simple truth.

  ‘No, of course not. You already know I’ve been there before. I obviously left my coat behind by mistake.’

  Ripley observed me, one eye half closed, and Pallett shifted his weight from foot to foot. I realised they knew more than they were telling me.

  ‘See, Stanhope,’ mumbled Ripley, his face contorted as if pained by my feeble attempt at deception. ‘You and I saw each other on Friday at the police station before that little skirmish, and I’m certain you were wearing that coat at the time. So, you must’ve been at the gaff after that, to have left it there, mustn’t you? Stands to reason. Which means you’re lying to me.’

  I could feel my heart beating. ‘Are you certain it was the same coat? Do you normally take note of such things? And it makes no difference anyway. It’s not a crime to lose your coat.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Ripley looked up at Pallett. ‘Constable?’

  ‘Sergeant.’ Pallett corrected him.

  The two men exchanged a slow look. Though opposites in temperament and physical design, they were the same rank now.

  Ripley gave the merest nod. ‘Sergeant. The newspaper, please.’

  Pallett opened up a copy of the Daily Chronicle. ‘Your article, Mr Stanhope. You clearly indicate here that you believe Mr Coffey is guilty of the murder of Oswald Drake.’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct. He is.’

  ‘Yet previously, you accused Agnes Munro. Now you say she’s been wrongfully imprisoned.’

  Ripley shifted in his seat, uncomfortable that Pallett had started asking questions. ‘A bit fickle, aren’t you, Stanhope?’

  I didn’t reply.

  Ripley took an age to light a cigarette. Even Pallett gave an audible sigh as the fifth match failed to spark. When he was finally able to inhale a lungful of smoke, the detective closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, allowing it to hang in the air between us.

  ‘We searched through Coffey’s possessions at the gaff, as your newspaper article demanded. The higher-ups …’ he pointed to the ceiling, where the pipes were gurgling with another gush of liquid. ‘They like the general public to believe we leave no stone unturned. I didn’t expect to find anything, not because Coffey’s an honest man but because he’s not a stupid one. For example, it would seem far-fetched that he’d leave incriminating evidence behind among his box of clothes. And yet, there it was, a syringe like the one used on Oswald Drake before he was murdered, with more than a whiff of morphine lingering about it.’

  ‘Well then, Detective Sergeant, you should arrest Coffey, like I suggested.’

  Ripley nodded. ‘Believe me, I would like nothing more, if I could find him. I don’t know what he’s guilty of, but I’m quite certain it’s something. Right now, I’m more concerned with you and your coat. See, a beggar boy gave it to us. Big lad he is and quite unpleasant. A life of crime ahead of him and probably behind him as well. On balance, we might as well hang him now and save ourselves a lot of trouble. But he was keen to show us your coat because he wanted very much to find the young fellow who’d left it behind. The two of ’em fought, I understand, and he lost, and so would like a rematch. Any thoughts on who that Cinderella might be?’

  ‘No. Did he recognise him?’

  ‘Strange you should ask. No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Well then. This has nothing to do with me.’

  Ripley smiled congenially and I felt my stomach lurch.

  ‘The thing is, Stanhope, we have him here in our custody. Why don’t we introduce the two of you?’

  Pallett left and came back with the lad, who was wearing a tatty jacket and a hangdog scowl. His cheekbone was bruised to a livid purple.

  Ripley pointed his cigarette. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  The lad’s eyes swivelled from side to side, trying to work out whether he was in trouble. Finding no reason why he shouldn’t admit the truth, he muttered: ‘Lewis Hawkins.’

  ‘Do you recognise anyone in this room?’

  I straightened my bowler and jacket and adopted a severe countenance.

  You’re a grown man and a reporter with a newspaper. You have a room and respectable friends. You’re nothing like the person he remembers.

  Hawkins squinted at me, but there was no recognition in his eyes.

  ‘No.’

  Ripley looked disappointed.

  ‘Tell us about the young man you met at the gaff, Master Hawkins.’

  Hawkins opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. The detective sighed and poked the bruise on the lad’s face, eliciting a yelp he seemed to find satisfying.

  ‘Who beat you?’

  Hawkins clenched his fists. ‘Some bastard I don’t know. It weren’t fair. I would’ve won. He jabbed me in the leg with something.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  The lad squirmed, trying to free himself from Pallett’s vast hand on his shoulder. ‘He was my age. Funny-looking. Oily hair.’

  Ripley pulled his face into a grimace. He’d clearly been hoping for something more damning. ‘All right, Sergeant, boot this imbecile out.’

  Pallett knocked on the door and a constable came in. I recognised him as the blond man who’d attempted to arrest Sister Agnes at the convent and been thrown against the dumb-iron of the carriage. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Clearly, he viewed Hawkins as a lesser threat, because he grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of the room, kicking the door shut behind him.

  I turned to the detective. ‘You see? None of this has anything to do with me. I haven’t committed any crime. You should be putting your attention to the murder of Mr Drake. Your job is to find Coffey, not sit in here wasting everyone’s time.’

  Ripley sighed. ‘It’s not me who’s wasting time.’ He waved a hand at Pallett. ‘Bring in the other one.’

  Pallett left again and returned with another constable, younger, with a fuzz of beard around his chin. Between them, moon-faced Maria was pulling and twisting, grubby as a stray dog, toes peeping through the ends of her shoes.

  The young constable pulled up her arm, forcing her to stand straight. When she tried to scratch him with her other hand, he slapped her face hard enough to raise a red mark on her cheek.

  Pallett released the girl from his subordinate’s grip. ‘Less of that, Eddie. There’s no need.’ It sounded like a suggestion, but the constable took it as an instruction and stood back, looking sheepish.

  Ripley smiled at the girl, not unkindly. ‘What do you have to tell us, young lady?’

  She cast a brief, unimpressed glance around the room and folded her arms. I lowered my chin and pulled down the brim of my hat.

  ‘Ten shillings,’ she said.

  Ripley blinked a couple of times and almost grinned. It was a rare thing to see in him, honest delight. So often, his expressions were deployed as tactics on the battlefield; a frown, a sniff, a raise of the eyebrows, all arrayed to unsettle a suspect and elicit more information. But this girl genuinely amused him.

  ‘What’s your name, kid?’

  ‘Annie Dowling.’

  A lie. Or, I supposed, the name Maria might be the lie. Or both of them. Or she was Maria and Annie, each at different times, and a dozen other names besides. Or she had no real name.

  Ripley cracked his knuckles. ‘What do you have to tell me, Annie?’

  ‘Ten shillings.’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Eight.’

  Ripley paused for a heartbeat, a trace of that grin still clinging to his face. He fished in his trouser pocket and pulled out half a crown. In the gaslight, it cast a large shadow on the wall, as if he was holding up the moon.

  ‘This, and no more.’

  She took the coin, gripping it tightly in her fist.

  ‘All right then, I’ll tell you.’ She thumbed towards me. ‘This one was at the gaff two nights ago. He came dressed as one of us, but he weren’t. He stabbed Lewis with a needle and hit Mr Coffey on his head with a box.’

  Ripley took a long, slow pull on his cigarette. ‘I see. And the needle used to stab that young man, did it look anything like this?’

  He fished into his jacket pocket and withdrew the syringe.

  The girl nodded. ‘The very one.’

  24

  Ripley seemed satisfied. His mind was made up. ‘You’ve been lying to me, Stanhope. I’m placing you under arrest for falsifying evidence. You went to the gaff and you placed the syringe among Mr Coffey’s possessions to incriminate him. You’d have seen him go to the gallows for the sake of your silly newspaper article.’ He shook his head, looking thoroughly miserable. ‘Bloody newspapermen.’

  ‘What about me?’ demanded Maria-or-Annie, her fist in her apron pocket with the half-crown clutched firmly within it.

  ‘You’re a witness. You’ll stay with us.’

  ‘What? No, I won’t.’

  She made a dash for the door, but Pallett scooped her up and carried her out. I could hear her kicks and screams fading as they reached the end of the corridor.

  Ripley’s hand strayed towards his jacket pocket for another cigarette and then lowered again. ‘My missus wants me to smoke less. She says she hates the smell of ash, but if she knew the shit I have to wade through …’ He sighed and produced a notebook from his drawer. ‘We may as well get the formalities done. Where do you claim you were on Saturday evening?’

  I couldn’t keep my voice steady. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember where you were two nights ago?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘All right, let’s see if a night or two in a cell helps jog your memory. As I recall, you’re not a man who takes well to confinement. Try not to piss all over yourself this time.’

  I stood up. ‘You have to believe me. Sister Agnes isn’t guilty.’

  Ripley shrugged, seeming more wretched than ever. ‘Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. Either way, she won’t be tried for killing Oswald Drake.’

  ‘Truly? That’s marvellous news. Why not?’

  ‘Damn it, I’m having one whether my missus likes it or not.’ He fished into his pocket for a cigarette and lit it with a match, first time. ‘Your fault, Stanhope, as with so many things. You’re the one who found the evidence that caused her to be arrested in the first place, and you’re also the one who falsified evidence against Coffey. A syringe in both cases. So it’s all equally tainted and no judge will allow it.’

  I felt a swirl of emotions. My plot to incriminate Coffey had failed utterly, and yet, by some ridiculous chance, it had succeeded in freeing Sister Agnes. For a fleeting second, I wondered if God did, indeed, have a plan. That idea gained further credence when I remembered that I was now under arrest myself; He had a perverse sense of humour, did God.

  ‘But Sister Agnes confessed,’ I offered, cautiously.

  Ripley looked gloomier than ever. ‘Yes, but the head nun, Miss Doyle, says Agnes Munro is a lunatic. Soft in the head. Visions and all sorts. She’d probably confess to killing Lord Cavendish if we gave her the chance.’ He spread out his hands, indicating the empty room. ‘So, now I’ve got nothing, thanks to you.’

  My elation was short-lived as I considered the consequences of Sister Agnes’s new freedom. A lot of people still believed her to be guilty. A cold fear blew through me.

  ‘Have you released her yet?’

  ‘Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Paperwork takes time.’

  ‘You can’t do it. Not without another suspect in custody.’

  Ripley closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. ‘First you wanted her arrested because she was guilty, then you wanted her released because she was innocent, but she pleaded guilty. Now we’re letting her out and you want her to stay locked up. Honestly, I wish to God I’d never met you, Stanhope.’

  ‘You don’t understand. What do you think that mob will do when they find out she’s not going to be prosecuted? They’ll lay siege to the convent. There’ll be a war.’

  ‘Not your concern, Stanhope.’ He dropped the end of his cigarette on the ground, where it fizzed in the damp. ‘You’ll be in the cells tonight and in court tomorrow or the day after.’

  They put me in the last cell in the row, the same one Sister Agnes had been in. There was a wind whistling through the high window and I could hear footsteps and the clatter of carriage wheels in the yards. Monday afternoon and everyone was busy. Only I was doing nothing, sitting and shivering on a scanty mattress, my hands covering my face.

  At least I was alone, for now anyway. Not for long. Soon, I would have lots of company. Once I was discovered, word would go around the police station like a pox, and they would all come to prod and poke me. Look at this freak. This abomination. It doesn’t even know what it is.

  I lay back and watched the light from the high window creep across the ceiling.

  I supposed Harry would write the article for the newspaper: How We Were Fooled or, more likely, I Always Suspected. I would be on the second page again.

  My sister would gather up her shame and compress it into a dense, elemental hatred.

  Jacob would waggle his beard and tell me that at least I was myself and damn all the rest of them – or at least, he would have, once upon a time. Now, I wasn’t sure. He might decide that I deserved this fate, and never speak of me again.

  Alfie’s customers would gossip, and his business would vanish like April mist; no new shop on Hanover Square, no marriage to Mrs Gower. He and Constance would look back on every lie I had told and believe I had taken them for fools.

  And Rosie … ah, yes, Rosie. She wouldn’t care a jot what anyone said.

  Where was Rosie, anyway?

  All afternoon, I paced my tiny cell. With my back to the wall at one end, it was step, step, step and a further half-step until my nose was touching one of the bars, then spin and do the same in reverse. I must have done it a hundred times, two hundred, sometimes starting with my left foot, sometimes my right, sometimes spinning clockwise and sometimes the other way. I tried it with my eyes shut and my hands behind my back, thinking at any moment I would trip. I tried it fast and I tried it so slowly I was hardly moving at all, my muscles tensed and aching. Anything rather than allow my brain to dwell on what I’d done.

  Some time the next day Sister Agnes would be released. I could imagine the furious uproar. Those men I’d seen in Whitehall, men like Trafford’s cousins, they wouldn’t take this lightly. They would burn her out of the convent like a fox from its den.

  And Ripley was right: it was my fault. My intervention had endangered her life and made Coffey seem less guilty. Whatever I touched, turned rotten.

  I used the pail in the corner. My monthly blood was almost at an end, but still my cloth was blotched red in the centre and pink at the edges. I refolded and replaced it, wondering whether I should simply tell Ripley my secret and get it over with. I would soon be discovered anyway, when I was required to change my clothes or piss in front of other men.

  Not yet, not yet.

  Since I’d left home, I’d never actually told anyone. Not a soul. Those few that knew the truth had found it out for themselves. I never seemed able to find the right words.

  Night fell and a copper brought in a prisoner, drunk and slurring, and tossed him into one of the other cells. I couldn’t see him, which I considered a blessing. I heard him puke a number of times and afterwards snore like a bilge pump.

  In the middle of the night, I was aware of the neighbouring cell door opening and closing, but I wasn’t altogether certain what was real and what wasn’t. I forgot about it until I heard the sound of someone moving around at dawn. I had no desire to introduce myself. Another drunk, most likely.

  At seven in the morning, according to Big Ben, a portly constable came in with a tray. He handed bowls of foul-smelling soup to the other cells, and a glass of ale and a plate of bread and jam for me.

  ‘Sergeant Pallett asked me to give you these,’ he said curtly, making clear that providing such dainties wasn’t his usual practice.

  ‘I want to see Ripley.’

  He didn’t meet my eye. ‘Detective Sergeant Ripley said to let you stew. He’ll get here when he’s ready.’

  ‘Then please give a message to Sergeant Pallett on my behalf. Tell him I need to see Mrs Flowers. Will you do that?’

  ‘What makes you think anyone’ll come for you?’ he sneered.

  ‘Oy, where’s my bread and jam?’ demanded the person in the next-door cell. I recognised her voice. It was the moon-faced girl, Maria-or-Annie.

  The copper sniffed. ‘If you want nice food, you shouldn’t go around biting people, should you?’

  He left, and for a blessed minute there was silence.

  ‘Are you going to eat that, Mr Soho?’ she asked.

  The better part of me remembered that she was a pauper child who’d suffered on the street her entire life. But the meaner part was still angry with her.

  ‘My name’s Stanhope. Who did you bite?’

  ‘That big copper, Mallet.’

  ‘Pallett. Why did you bite him?’

  ‘We had a disagreement. He wanted me to stay in a cot upstairs and be quiet, and I preferred to go about my business.’ She tapped her spoon on the brick wall between us. ‘I’ll forget all about your crimes in exchange for that breakfast.’

  I didn’t believe her for a second, but I wasn’t hungry now. I pushed the plate between the bars and around the wall that separated our cells. A small, grubby hand reached out and took it.

  ‘Don’t you think you owe me some thanks?’

  She cackled loudly. ‘For this?’

  ‘For saving you. If it hadn’t been for me—’

 

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