Down a Dark River, page 32
I couldn’t say how many miles I trudged that evening, stopping into pubs and lodging houses on the south side of the river. Long enough that I got a blister in the same place I used to, on my left heel. But I chanced upon an apothecary that was open late, strapped on a dab of plaster, and kept going. On I walked, past midnight, then one, through the squalor and smells, the gas lamps and garbage. I knew Price would return to the boathouse, but I wanted to find him before he took his next victim. And he might be just around the next dark corner.
Finally, it was nearly two in the morning, and every street was quieting down. So I went home.
But all night, in my dreams, I walked. Only I wasn’t looking for Price. With the deranged logic of nightmares, I walked because so long as I kept moving, Stiles would be alive in the morning.
* * *
For three days, I worked feverishly, searching for Price, stopping in at the hospital each morning and evening to check on Stiles, and resting my shoulder, which was mending nicely. Harry was home at night, and it was thanks to him I ate and slept. James was wrong about Stiles’s fever. On the third day, it still hadn’t broken.
And then it was Monday.
I didn’t even wonder if Price was finished. I knew he wasn’t. Couldn’t be.
I sent a note to Belinda via a delivery of bread to Catherine and received a brief answer. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.” It wasn’t signed, but I knew her hand. I tucked it carefully into the pocket at my breast, as if by keeping it safe, I could keep her safe, too.
CHAPTER 47
Monday night, I went to wait outside the home of the Griffiths on Candall Street. Call it an impulse, but he was the Beckfords’ barrister, likely the presiding genius at the trial, and I could imagine Price wanting to be sure Griffiths was dealt with. Through discreet questions, we knew that in addition to the man and his wife, a son and a daughter lived at the home, as well as several servants, including two maids.
I stayed buried in the shadows and didn’t reveal my presence to the sergeant in plain clothes, who must have been pulled from the Mayfair division, for I didn’t recognize him. He did just as I would have done, standing at the corner opposite the house, just outside the ring of gaslight, where he could observe the street as well as the front door. We’d had men stationed here for days, and I sensed from the sergeant’s posture that he was doubtful it could possibly be worth all this time.
I watched the inhabitants of the house moving through the lit rooms, soft-edged silhouettes behind the curtains. Finally, at eight o’clock, Mrs. Griffiths and her daughter, dressed in fancy garb, came out of the house. My pulse quickened as they approached a cab that drew up to the door. From where I stood, I’d seen that cab loitering around the corner, as if in wait, for perhaps a quarter of an hour.
I leaped forward and hollered at them. “Stop! Stop! Don’t get in that cab!”
Mrs. Griffiths turned and stared at me in alarm. “What on earth?”
“Did you order this cab?” I demanded.
“Cab?” She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “This is our carriage!”
“Your family’s carriage?”
“Who else’s would it be?” she retorted.
I looked up at the driver. He was a young man, pale, slender, with short fair hair. The exact opposite of Mr. Price. “Look here—” he began with a frown.
“Never mind,” I muttered. “I’m sorry. A misunderstanding.”
The sergeant was beside me then, breathless, though he said not a word.
The daughter was clutching her mother’s arm, her expression fearful. I realized the irony of it—that in trying to protect them, I had probably frightened them half out of their wits.
“I’m an inspector with Scotland Yard,” I explained swiftly, “and we’ve had reports of unethical cab drivers in this part of London. May I ask, where are you going?”
“We’re visiting friends for dinner,” Mrs. Griffiths snapped. “And as I said, this is a private carriage, not a cab for hire.”
I looked up at the driver. “Will you wait and bring them home?”
“Of course he will,” Mrs. Griffiths said. “He always does. Now, get in, Anna. We don’t wish to be late.”
Mrs. Griffiths and her daughter climbed in, and the carriage rattled off down the street.
The sergeant was looking at me with a mix of uncertainty and resentment.
“I’m sorry,” I said wearily. “I had a feeling the man we’re looking for would be here tonight.”
He frowned. “Well, I’ve been watching the house since four o’clock.” He pointed in the direction of the vanished carriage. “They’re the only ones who’ve left, through the front door, leastwise. Some servants have left, too, but I was told it was the daughter he’d be after.”
“That’s right.” I put a hand on his shoulder, to soften any sense that I hadn’t trusted him. “You’re exactly right.”
He looked mollified. “Well, that driver ain’t going to hurt ’em. He don’t look like he could fight off m’ sister.”
A driver and a private carriage. Price could never convince the two women to get into his cab afterward—unless—
Suddenly, belatedly, the sergeant’s words sank in.
I spun on my heel. The sergeant stepped backward with a look of alarm.
“That’s it!” I burst out. “He’s going to get rid of the driver! Throw him off the box! That’s how he’ll get at her!”
His eyes went wide and his mouth opened.
“I need a cab!” I spun around and darted toward the nearest cross street.
The sergeant shouted, “One just turned up that street, going north!”
“Find out where they’re going!” I threw over my shoulder. “I’ll be back!”
To this day, I couldn’t say how I caught up to a London cab. I’m sure I must have looked mad to anyone watching, but I don’t recall seeing a soul. All I perceived was the yellow lantern, appearing to grow as I ran. I pulled abreast and waved frantically at the driver. “I need you to drive down Candall Street! Hurry, and I’ll give you double!”
At his nod, I leapt inside, and he turned the carriage and whipped up the horse. We were rattling over the stones when we reached the Griffiths’ house. “Hold up here!”
I leaned out of the carriage and shouted out the window, “Where?”
“Twelve Wigmore!” the sergeant called out. He took a few running steps toward me, but I ordered the driver to go, and he did.
“Fastest way?” he asked.
“Yes—no—however a private carriage will go.”
“Aye, then.”
The wheels churned against the stones, and I clung to the strap inside, all the while scanning each cab as we drew up from behind and passed it, looking for the young man with the fair hair and the delicate hands. I was so bent on finding him that I almost didn’t see the carriage coming toward us, the driver a dark, hulking man.
Was it Price?
He’d thrown the driver off already?
I twisted round to stare at the carriage. It looked the same—the same sort of wheels—but there were thousands of them in London.
I made a split-second decision.
“Driver, follow that carriage we just passed,” I called. “But don’t let him know.”
He turned obligingly. “Aw right, guv’nor.”
“That man means harm, but we need to confront him somewhere quiet.”
Then I fell silent, so the driver could muster all his concentration for the task at hand. I craned my head out the window and didn’t take my eyes off the carriage for a moment. Staying back a ways, we followed it east and south by the smaller roads, across Regent Street, across Charing Cross, toward the Strand, parallel to Fleet Street, across Blackfriars Bridge, and then down toward the wharves. With each turn, I felt more certain it was Price driving. The Beckford boathouse was close, and as I watched, the cab ahead drew into a darkened lane and vanished.
And the lantern vanished, too, as if it were suddenly extinguished.
I swore under my breath and jumped out. “Follow me.”
He didn’t even pause before he clambered down.
“Good man,” I said, then ran around the corner and down a narrow alley. Stopped and listened, trying to contain my breath.
Then came the scrape of a wheel, the clop of a horse’s shoe on stone. I dashed forward, followed by my driver, and there was Price, climbing down from the box. Silently, sliding along the shadows, I came up behind him, and put my revolving pistol to his back.
The metal found his spine, and he froze.
I said, “Mr. Price, don’t resist.”
He took one rasping breath, and another. Then his shoulders softened and slumped forward, as if he were dropping a burden at his feet. Was it my imagination, or did I sense a peculiar relief? A weariness that was far beyond physical exhaustion?
“Put your right hand behind you.” He did so, and I slid one of the metal cuffs around his wrist and clicked it shut. Without my asking, he brought his left hand back, and I had him, my fingers wrapped around the connecting chain. I put my gun away and turned.
“Driver! Look in the cab and tell me what you see.”
He stepped forward warily and peered in through the window. He turned to me, his face filled with horror. “Two ladies, both dead as doornails!”
“I think they’re drugged. See if they’re breathing.”
He swung open the door, and in a moment, he reappeared, relieved. “Aye! They’re just sleepin’.”
“Good. Drive them to Candall Street and leave your name and address with the sergeant there. You’ll be well paid for your time and trouble. And I’ll drive your cab back myself.”
“A’ right.” He eyed Mr. Price uncertainly. “What are you goin’ to do with him?”
“Never mind that,” I said crisply. “Go on, now. Take the ladies home. Tell the servants to fetch a doctor. They’ve likely had chloroform, but they should be all right.”
He climbed onto the box, and I waited until he’d vanished around the corner. Then I prodded Mr. Price, who had the resigned air of a beast of burden under a yoke.
“Head toward the bridge,” I said.
With Price ahead of me and my hands on the cuffs, we walked along the pavement in silence, until I asked, “Where’s the driver of their carriage?”
“Side of the road,” he muttered. “Not far from the house.”
So the sergeant will find him, I thought. “Alive?”
“Yah. I’ve nought ’gainst him.”
We reached the bridge with its stone parapet, and about twenty steps along, I turned him so the light of the moon shone on his face. I needed that.
He gave a series of phlegmy coughs into his shoulder. When he’d finished, he wiped his mouth against his lapel and said, “You’re Corravan, ain’t ye?”
“Yes. And you are Bernard Price.”
“Why’re y’ bringin’ me here?” he asked.
“I know why you did it,” I said quietly. “I read the trial transcript.”
A tremor shook his entire frame, and then he went still again. His breathing was strained, but his shoulders bunched powerfully underneath his coat, and I was glad I had taken the precaution of cuffing him. His dark eyes were pinned to mine.
“That trial was a bloody mockery,” I said.
“Damn right.”
“But why hurt those women?” I asked. “Why not Beckford?”
“I’d’a kilt him, too.” He shook his head, the black hair going every which way in the breeze that came and went. “But not until I got t’ others first. I wanted justice. Was I wrong to want that for my girl?”
“Mr. Price, this isn’t justice! Those poor women didn’t deserve what you did. And their friends and their fiancés are devastated because of you. Do you understand?”
An expression of uncertainty crossed his face before the anger returned. “But it was the only way to teach those men anythin’!” By moonlight, his eyes were black and glittering as the water below. “There are some folks wot have a heart. They understand a poor man’s pain, even if they ha’n’t felt something like it ’afore. But there are some who can’t imagine anythin’ they ha’n’t felt themselves.” His chin gestured toward all of London north of the Thames. “The only thing that lot understand is meanness.”
I didn’t say so, but yes, I’d felt that way sometimes.
“You’re a Yard man,” he said accusingly. “You should know better ’n anybody how people only think about themselves and their own.”
“It’s true of many people,” I admitted. “But not everyone.”
He snorted. “So you don’t hate ’em? Wot—you think you can change ’em? You’re more fool than I took you for.”
“I loathe men like the Beckfords,” I replied. “But there are truly kind people in the world, who look beyond their own.”
He grimaced in disbelief.
A tug steamed through one of the arches below us, and the vibration penetrated the soles of my boots. I waited until the boat had passed before I answered. “After my mother died, a woman named Mary Doyle took me in because I needed a home. But her bigger kindness was the way she did it, for she never let me see what a burden it was, never made me feel ashamed of being an extra mouth to feed. She thanked me for whatever I could contribute, instead of making me feel like it was the least I owed her.”
He shrugged. “You were lucky.”
Yes, I was. Unbelievably so. Not just because Ma Doyle took me in. But because day in and day out, she showed me what human decency and compassion looked like. I’d never thanked her for that. But now I was endlessly grateful to her for providing an example that might help me here.
“Bernard, tell me about Elaine,” I said gently.
He sagged his left hip against the stone. “Le’ me ask you somethin’. Do you know a girl? A good girl. A sister, mebbe, or a niece?”
Part of me wanted to resist entering into the scene he was sketching. But Elsie’s pretty face rose unbidden into my mind, and I nodded.
His chin lifted in reply. “Aye. So imagine your girl, workin’ in a house where she’s just trying to earn her wage. Every day, up at six, staying up till ten or eleven at night to finish her work, and her only break a half day on Sunday.” His voice broke. “Now imagine a brute, coming home drunk, and taking her one night, in the kitchen, threatenin’ her with a knife and tyin’ her down and plantin’ his seed in her, all the while laughing that his wife ain’t so nice as she is. And her getting up the courage to stand up in court, when speaking it is near as wretched as livin’ it again! My sweet girl—those men smirkin’ and mockin’ her—and hearin’ those terrible lies told about her wantin’ him to do what he done so she could blackmail ’im after—my sweet girl—”
His voice had gone hoarse, and his whole form trembled. “To give her two pounds ten, as if that was enough to live on, ’cause she has no chance of findin’ another position, no chance of a decent life for the rest of her days! And carrying a babe inside her, by a man wot’ll never give her a farthing toward its care. And you know you cain’t help her.”
His eyes were dry—but mine were stinging with tears, sharp as needles. I wasn’t just picturing Elaine but also Elsie and Belinda, too, as a girl, and Rachel, all of them overlapping like a series of waves.
“But you could help her,” I managed.
He shook his head. “I’m dyin’. Black lungs from workin’ in the mines as a boy, ’afore I found work on the river. Cain’t you hear it?” He studied me for a minute. “Aye. I see what you’re thinking. That I killed because I might as well, seein’s I have nothing to lose. But what else could I do?” he burst out. “Think on it, man! Haven’t you ever been at the mercy o’ men who care no more for you and yourn than if you was a pebble in their way?”
It was as if he had some uncanny power to see into my past. Rattled, I said nothing.
He leaned forward: “If it was your daughter, what would you do?”
Another fair, and brutal, question. Dear God, I thought. I hoped I wouldn’t murder young women for the purpose of teaching their fathers a lesson. But yes, I’d want to see the Beckfords hurt. What would stop me is the knowledge that there was no point in trying to teach men like Beckford anything.
Again, I couldn’t answer. Perhaps he thought I was unaffected, for he sighed, and his voice became flat, toneless. “I held Elaine in my arms the night she died. She warn’t crying out. Hadn’t been the sort to squall, even when she was a babe.”
“A good girl,” I murmured, and he nodded. “Did you let Charlotte Munro live because of the baby she was carrying?”
“Yah. Warn’t fair not to.”
So despite everything, he had a shred of decency, an unwillingness to harm the innocent unborn child.
“And you began with Rose Albert,” I said.
His chin lowered. “He war the judge. At the end, he talked to the jury like he hadn’t heard a word Elaine said.”
A foghorn sent its mournful note from upriver. I waited until the echoes had faded. “And where did you get the idea for putting the women in the boats?”
His chest heaved, and he fought down a cough. “I only learnt to read and write some, and I can’t see the little type in the papers. But Elaine could read as good as anybody.” He wagged his head. “Each week, she brung a paper with stories ’bout King Arthur and his queen and the knights joustin’ and all to read out loud. And then, one Sunday, she says there’s a special story ’bout a girl named Elaine, except it’s sad. She was cryin’ by the end of it, with the maid lovin’ that bloke and him not even knowin’. Elaine liked a good cry over a story.”
There were tears running down his rough cheeks, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“So when she died, that Monday night, after bleedin’ so, I took her poor body down to the river and found a boat for ’er. Steered past the docks in the dark. Stayed with her all the way past Blackwall Reach.”
No wonder we hadn’t found her. From there, the tide would have taken Elaine all the way to Sheerness and the sea, unless the boat was caught in some of the marshy land along the river.
