When the Devil Drives (24 page)

‘Yes, we use it. Not as much this time of year as in the season but I always like to have some on hand.'

‘How is it delivered?'

‘From the cart, early in the morning. Would you like to come and see?'

We went into the club's kitchen, where Mr Pollitt changed his good black jacket for a brown one, took a key from a hook and lit a candle in a holder. He led the way down narrow stairs between whitewashed walls and a smell of damp stone came up to meet us. Since we were already in the basement when we started, we must have been deep under Pall Mall. A carriage rolling overhead sounded like distant thunder. We passed between cobwebbed racks containing thousands upon thousands of bottles, some of them probably laid down before our grandfathers were born, then he ducked through a low opening and held the candle so that I could follow without banging my head. We were in a smaller cellar, with bottles of champagne ranged round the walls. He went to the corner where a box had been constructed from planks and lifted off layer after layer of sacking.

‘There we are.'

Candlelight glinted on a transparent cube.

‘We had a delivery just last week,' Mr Pollitt said. ‘In summer, when everybody's drinking champagne and hock, we have to order two or three blocks a week.'

‘Are you here when it's delivered?'

‘No. The ice man likes to do his rounds in the early morning when the temperature's at its coldest. So we have a system for delivery.' He unhitched a rope from the wall, tugged on it, and a big canvas tube came down. ‘The tube goes up to the street. If we've ordered a delivery, we set this up the night before and whoosh, down comes the ice.'

‘Where do you order it from?'

‘A firm in Limehouse.'

I asked if he could let me have the firm's name and address. He led the way back upstairs to the kitchen and took a box of tradesmen's accounts out of a cupboard.

‘Here we are. Nathaniel Hobbes and Sons, Limehouse Lock.'

I thanked him and called out a goodbye to Mrs Pollitt. Two hours later, Tabby and I were on an omnibus, jolting along Commercial Road towards Limehouse.

The area east of the Tower of London was new territory to Tabby and she sat wide-eyed and silent, taking in everything. There were no fashionable carriages once we'd left the City area behind. Most of the traffic was a stream of great carts being drawn westwards by heavy horses with cargoes of crates and barrels and massive squared timbers from the docks. I'd only seen the area from the river, when travelling from the Pool of London towards the sea. The Thames is broad there, crowded from bank to bank with merchant ships bringing spices from India, tea and silks from China, wood and tar from the Baltic, coal from Durham, even red-sailed barges from Essex sliding in and out with hay for London's horses. I hadn't told Tabby why we were going to Limehouse. My hunch was based on something so close to being non-existent that I didn't want to talk about it.

The driver shouted ‘Limehouse' and we got down. To our left a mass of masts clustered around the West India Docks. In front of us was Limehouse Basin, also crowded with ships. On the far side, a narrow neck of water joined it to the Thames. Closer to us, barges clustered at the opening of the Regent's Canal. Tabby and I attracted some curious looks as we walked towards the water, the only women in sight. The wharves were full of dockers, unloading half a dozen ships at the same time. Cargoes swung out in nets that looked heavy enough to scatter the men like ninepins, but they seized them with hooks and guided them to the ground, then divided them into separate burdens to be carried to waiting carts. The chains of men from ship to carts were in motion all the time, the shouting, clanging and banging like the sounds of a battle. Tabby and I had to jump out of the way of three men running with crates as large as cabin trunks on their shoulders. A gang of sailors sitting on a wall whistled at us and made unmistakeable signs. Tabby made signs straight back at them, bringing ironic cheers and more whistles.

‘Come on,' I said.

I'd spotted the bar of a lock gate above the cluster of barges, and anything was better than staying where we were.

The lower lock gates were open when we reached them, letting several loaded barges from the canal into the basin. We went up a flight of steps to the narrow dock wharf. A line of warehouses stood back from the wharf, with a smaller building that looked like the lock manager's office in front of them. The door was open, with several men standing inside. Most of them seemed to be bargemen, but one was dressed formally in a black suit and top hat.

‘Excuse me,' I said. ‘Can you tell me where to find the ice importer, Nathaniel Hobbes?'

One of the bargeman laughed. The manager turned round and seemed surprised to see us. ‘He's been dead ten years, ma'am.'

‘So who runs the company now?'

‘His widow, Mrs Hobbes.'

The bargeman laughed again and muttered something about the old bitch having sharper teeth than the dog ever had. The manager shushed him. I asked where we might find Mrs Hobbes.

‘She lives over there in Narrow Street.'

He pointed to a line of houses parallel to the river. Tabby and I picked our way back across the wharf and round the water, towards a street of straight-fronted eighteenth-century houses, where the channel from the basin joined the river. The smell of river mud hung over everything. I asked an urchin where Mrs Hobbes lived and he pointed to a house with a newly painted green front door and a polished brass knocker. The window box was planted with a double row of sempervivums, every rosette of leaves exactly the same size as its neighbours.

We paused a few steps away, while I explained to Tabby something that was troubling my conscience. ‘I try not to lie, but sometimes people deserve to be lied to. I have no idea whether Mrs Hobbes deserves being lied to or not. Just keep quiet and don't look surprised.'

She nodded, looking less bothered than I was about the ethics of her new trade. We walked up to the front door and knocked. It was opened after a short delay by a maid, neat and correct in black dress and white mob cap. I gave her my card, apologized for calling without an appointment and said I hoped Mrs Hobbes might see me on a matter of business. The maid shut the door on us and several minutes passed before she came back.

‘She says you can come in.'

She led the way into a parlour facing onto the street. For an ice merchant's house, it was surprisingly snug. A fire burned in the grate behind a bright brass fender, with a tortoiseshell cat asleep on the rug and a kettle on the hob. Mrs Hobbes sat by the fire on an upright chair of carved oak, softened with embroidered cushions. She was a small woman with a round lined face that suggested she was fifty at least, but her hair, under an old-fashioned widow's cap, was dark and glossy. If she used hair dye, it was of the best quality. Her black wool dress was offset by collar and cuffs of starched white linen. More white linen swathed her left foot that was propped up on a stool. She saw my eyes going to it.

‘An accident. You'll excuse me not getting up, I'm sure. Sit down.'

She had a clipped way of speaking, as if words were valuable. Her eyes were steel grey and sharp. We sat.

‘Thank you for seeing us,' I said. ‘I'm here on behalf of a friend. She's planning a Christmas ball and is thinking of having a large sculpture in ice as a centre piece.'

‘How large?'

‘Oh, more than lifesize.'

‘What of?'

‘A Jack Frost possibly. Or perhaps a couple dancing, on a big mirror like skating on a frozen pond.' (Perhaps I could even persuade one of my rich acquaintances to do it.)

‘Dancers would be better than Jack Frost,' she said decisively. ‘You want curves, not jagged bits that break off.'

The kettle hissed and spat. She gestured to Tabby to move it back from the hob.

‘My ice is normally carted in twenty inch cubes,' she said. ‘If your friend gives me a month's prior notice I can have larger cubes cut especially, but they're more awkward to ship so the price would be higher. She'll need to have the ice delivered at least three days before the carver starts work. For an extra charge, I can send a man to supervise.'

‘Where does your ice come from?' I asked.

‘A lake in Norway. There.'

She pointed to a framed map on the wall. It was mostly black and white, but near the west coast of Norway, a lake had been picked out in bright blue water colour. A blue painted line ran from the lake, across the North Sea and into the Thames estuary, ending at the Limehouse basin.

‘That's amazing,' I said.

All this to cool Pall Mall's champagne.

‘It's the purest ice in the world,' Mrs Hobbes said. ‘The men go out with horse-drawn sledges, to cut blocks of ice from the middle of the lake. I've seen them doing it.'

‘You've been all the way to Norway yourself?'

‘Three times. You have to see things are done properly.'

‘Did you take over the business after your husband died?'

‘I had no choice. On our carts, it said Nathaniel Hobbes and Sons, but that was only for the look of it. There were no sons, only four daughters.'

This brought me back to business. ‘I think I've seen your carts around town,' I said.

‘If you see an ice cart, it will be one of ours.'

‘Do you distribute it from the docks here?'

‘No. It's unloaded from the ship here, then it goes by barge up the Regent's Canal to the dock by Regent's Park. Just by the park, in Cumberland Market, there's an ice pit eighty feet deep that will hold fifteen hundred tons.'

‘I should like very much to see it,' I said.

‘We don't let the public in. It can be dangerous, handling ice.'

‘Dangerous?'

She glanced down at her swaddled foot.

‘Did that happen at Cumberland Market?' I asked.

‘No. Here when I was watching them unload. Somebody let a block slip.' Her tone suggested that the somebody had not been forgiven.

‘When did that happen?'

‘A month ago.'

Mrs Hobbes was tired of my curiosity and brought us back to business. When would my friend decide? If she wanted it for Christmas, she shouldn't waste time. I put the price list she gave me in my reticule and promised to pass it on to my friend. Outside, Tabby and I walked in silence for a while.

‘You're not a bad liar,' she said.

I led us inland, towards an ornate church tower in white stone. St Anne's, Limehouse, had been a landmark for ships coming up the estuary for more than a hundred years. Tabby paced along beside me.

‘So it was the ice cart?' she said.

‘I think so, yes.'

‘Does the old woman know?'

‘What do you think?'

Tabby's judgements were usually instantaneous. This time she had to think about it. ‘She's a close one. She could have known, but I don't suppose she watches every cart that goes out.'

‘Certainly not for the past month, with that leg. That's assuming she's telling the truth about when the accident happened.'

‘You think she told a lie about that?'

‘I don't know. Even if it's true, the question is why it happened. Did somebody arrange the accident to make sure she wasn't keeping as close an eye on her business as usual?'

‘Could we ask somebody?' Tabby looked towards the busy dock basin.

‘If we go asking around there about an accident that might have been deliberate, I think we might meet with one ourselves,' I said.

‘So what are we going to do?'

‘Find somebody somewhere else. That's why we're going to the church. People are more likely to have time on their hands.'

‘So you're looking for some old busybody who knows about the accident.'

‘Yes.'

Something besides that, too. Something so unlikely that I wouldn't mention even the possibility to Tabby, so that I shouldn't look a fool in her eyes. We walked round the side of the church and into the churchyard. An old man dozed on a bench in the cool autumn sunshine, his body twisted sideways, probably from a lifetime of labour in the docks. A thin woman in black knelt to weed a grave plot. Neither looked likely gossips. I sat down on a bench by the church wall and signed for Tabby to sit next to me. She sat, but fidgeted.

‘What are we waiting for?'

‘Somebody who's alert enough to notice two strangers and inquisitive enough to want to know what we're doing here.'

A curate passed, in a hurry and muttering to himself, not noticing us. The thin woman straightened up painfully from the grave, wrapped the kitchen fork that she'd been using to weed in a piece of brown paper and put it in the pocket of her coat. She walked slowly past us, eyes downcast. For twenty minutes or so nothing happened, except that Tabby got up and walked round the graves, frowning at their inscriptions as if they'd been chiselled to annoy her.

A woman came out of the side door of the church. She was middle-aged and comfortable looking, dressed in a cape of navy blue wool, with a basket on her arm. As she came alongside our bench she smiled and wished me good morning. I smiled back and said it was a fine day for the end of October.

‘Yes, but we're getting the mists in the morning, aren't we?'

‘It's not so bad back in town,' I said. ‘I suppose it's always mistier by the river.'

Tabby was back, standing within listening distance.

‘You're not from round here then?' the woman said, as if she didn't know.

‘No. We've just come from calling on Mrs Hobbes.'