When the Devil Drives (4 page)

Coaches came and went. In one of the lulls, Tabby caught my eye and walked over, looking dejected. ‘None of them seen nothing like her.' She scuffed the cobbles with the toe of her shoe. When worried, she tended to revert to street urchin habits. ‘Some of the boys think the devil's chariot took her off.'

‘What?'

It was the first time I'd heard of it. She explained, still not meeting my eye.

‘They say there's this chariot goes round the streets, drawn by two black horses with red eyes and footmen on the back with bulls' heads and horns. Girls get dragged inside and never seen no more.'

I sighed. For all the toughness of her life, or perhaps because of it, Tabby was as superstitious as a sailor. At this time of year, with the nights growing long and Halloween not far away, lads were always dreaming up ghost stories to make girls shudder.

‘So you're suggesting Dora Tilbury got straight off the stage from Essex and was swept up by the devil?' I said.

She gave a reluctant shake of the head. I brought us back to business. ‘What about men meeting people off the stage last Thursday?'

‘Old man meeting two old women. Young man in a squashed sort of hat meeting another young man. Bad-tempered cove meeting a fat woman with a yapping little dog . . .' She ran through a list of seven or eight. It was a testimonial to her powers of extracting information and her memory.

‘No good though, is it?' Tabby said.

I was inclined to agree, but didn't want to depress her spirits any further. ‘It is in its way. Nobody noticed her. That almost certainly means that when she got off the coach she didn't ask anybody for directions or stand round wondering where to go. Since she doesn't know London, that probably means she was met.'

‘But there isn't any of them being met that sounds like her.'

‘No. So that might mean that whoever met her took care that they shouldn't be noticed.'

‘So you and me was right. She was meeting some man she wasn't supposed to meet.'

‘Exactly.'

But the conclusion was bad news for us. If Miss Tilbury had eloped with a secret lover, they were lost to us among London's two million citizens, or already gone from London to anywhere in the country or on the Continent. Any hope of tracing them would involve inquiries back at Miss Tilbury's home about her correspondence and all the men she'd ever met. That would not be welcomed by the poetic young gentleman, so there'd be no more money from him. The guardian, from what Mr James had said, was likely to turn his back on the whole unpleasant business. Only a determination that our client should get his full two guineas worth kept me waiting there to meet the Braintree stage, the
Sovereign
.

It arrived only five minutes late, turning into the yard at a hammering trot. The wheels had hardly stopped turning before the driver jumped down from the box and threw the reins to a waiting groom. He was a burly red-faced man, with a nose that looked like a squashed raspberry tartlet. I waited until he'd emptied a tankard that a waiter brought out to him before asking about the woman in a blue cloak a week ago.

‘What is it about her? You're the second one asking me.'

He was bad-tempered, slurring his words. I guessed that he'd downed at least one tankard at the four or five stopping places between Braintree and London, probably with a warming measure of gin mixed in with the beer.

‘Was the first one a fair-haired young man?'

He nodded.

‘And you remember picking her up in Boreham early on Thursday morning?'

Another nod. He was watching the back door of the inn for the reappearance of the waiter.

‘Did you see her getting off the coach?'

‘No. Why should I? I've got enough to do with the horses and everything to see to.'

I was sure that then, as now, he'd have had his face in the tankard.

‘Did she say anything to you at all?'

‘No.'

‘And you didn't notice anybody waiting to meet her?'

‘No. No business of mine.'

He stumped into the inn, mumbling about the idleness of waiters.

That seemed to end our investigations at the Three Nuns and I was looking for Tabby to go home when I overheard a scrap of conversation. Two women were standing by the gateway to the street, listening to a clerk-like man.

‘. . . didn't even know she was up there. First thing anybody knew, there she was on the pavement with her arm torn off and blood all over the place.'

Other people were coming up to hear him. I joined them and asked one of the women what was happening.

‘Girl threw herself off the Monument last night.'

The man started his story over again, for the new arrivals. The Monument in question was the 200-foot high column on Fish Street Hill near London Bridge, built to commemorate the Great Fire in the time of the second King Charles. It was, sadly, a magnet for suicides. Beyond the fact that we were looking for a girl and a girl had died, there seemed nothing to connect it with our investigations. I felt a tug on my coat, and there was Tabby behind me.

‘Are you going to ask him if she had fair hair?'

Somebody saved me the trouble by asking what the girl looked like. The man had to admit he didn't know. It turned out that he hadn't been there in person, but had talked to a man who had been. I walked out to the street, Tabby following me.

‘One of the things you'll learn is not to jump to conclusions,' I said. ‘There's no reason at all to think it's our Miss Tilbury.'

‘But we're going to make sure all the same, aren't we?'

With her knowledge of London, she'd immediately registered the fact that we'd turned eastwards into a side street towards St Paul's instead of back to our omnibus stop.

‘Another thing you learn is not to rely on everything you hear,' I said.

‘If she'd decided to do away with herself, she wouldn't wait a whole week to do it, would she?'

‘Probably not.'

And yet the patterns of suicide were strange. My missing person searches meant that I had to look for the small paragraphs in newspapers that recorded these lonely deaths. Some people did it simply and threw themselves in the muddy waters of the Thames. Others chose most elaborate ways, as if planning some scene on stage. I didn't talk about this to Tabby. We walked quickly past St Paul's and into Cannon Street. After a while the bright bronze flames at the top of the Monument came into view.

‘I never been up there,' Tabby said. ‘Sixpence they charge you. Is it true you can see the sea from the top?'

‘No.'

Forty or so people were queuing at the railings round the bottom of the monument, waiting for admission under the disapproving eye of a City police constable. I told Tabby to wait and went up to him.

‘Is it true a girl jumped off the Monument last night?'

He gave me an unfriendly look and nodded towards the queue. ‘Can't you tell? Blinking ghouls.'

Normally, on a cloudy day in October, people would not be queuing to climb the three hundred or so stairs to the top.

‘I don't want to go up there,' I said. ‘Only, I'm trying to find out if anybody has identified her yet.'

He looked a little less unfriendly. ‘You lost somebody, then?'

‘An acquaintance of mine has been missing from home for a week. A young lady of nineteen years old, with fair hair, average height or a little below.'

He thought about it for a while. ‘Doesn't sound like her. From what I could see, she was a bit above the average tall. Right sort of age, though, give or take a year or two.'

‘You saw her, then?'

He nodded. ‘Didn't see her coming down, but I was there soon after they found her. I've been on this beat just under two years and this is the third one. They should have better railings or some nets at the top to stop people. The coroner keeps telling them, but do they do anything?'

‘What colour was her hair?'

‘Hard to tell. There was a lot of blood, but apart from that her hair was wet and that makes it look darker. Still, I'd reckon brown, not fair.'

‘Her hair was wet?'

‘Soaking wet.'

In spite of the clouds, it hadn't rained last night or this morning.

‘How would her hair be wet?'

He shrugged. ‘Funny things they do. Maybe she thought she'd wash her hair first.'

While we were talking, another half dozen people had joined the queue. The constable looked at them as if he wanted to spit, only police regulations wouldn't allow it.

‘My woman had a birthmark on the inside of her left wrist, pale brown, about the size of a farthing,' I said.

‘Left, was it?' He said it as if that made the thing more serious and came to a decision. ‘Want to come and have a look at her?'

I nodded, heart sinking. He signalled to another constable standing on the corner to come and take his place and pointed to the church of St Magnus the Martyr at the bottom of the hill.

‘That's where we took her.'

As we walked, I tried to steel myself. It wouldn't be the first time I'd had to look at a dead body, but it seemed to be harder rather than easier with repetition.

‘The thing is . . .' the constable said, and hesitated. ‘The thing is, her left arm got torn off. It must have caught on the railings as she came down.'

We stopped at a side door of the church.

‘If you liked, I could go in and have a look first,' he said. ‘Then if she hasn't got the mark on her wrist, you won't have to see her, will you.'

Cravenly, I thanked him and waited outside for what seemed like a long time. He came out, shaking his head.

‘No mark there. Was your friend married?'

‘No.' (Not unless she'd married in the past week.)

‘This one's got a ring on her wedding finger.'

‘Is it very new?'

‘Might be. Funny looking thing for a wedding ring. Any road, we had a good look, me and the beadle, and there's no birthmark inside her left wrist or anywhere near it. So whoever she is, she's not your friend.'

We walked back to the Monument, where Tabby was chatting to a workman. He had a chisel in his hand and his jacket was grey with stone dust.

‘He found her,' she said.

The workman nodded. ‘I was on my way in to work. Nearly fell over her.'

‘Does anybody know when she climbed up there?' I said.

The workman glanced towards the entrance to the Monument, where the attendant seemed to be refusing to let more people in.

‘I reckon she spent the night up there. Mr Jenkins says he always checks the top gallery . . .'

‘Mr Jenkins being the attendant?'

‘That's right. Says he looked as usual before he locked up and she wasn't there, only he would say that, wouldn't he?'

‘So you think she hid up there and waited?'

‘Can't see otherwise.'

Waited for what, I wondered. For the streets to be quiet? For the first glint of light on the cold Thames?

‘What time did you find her?'

‘Half past six.'

‘And nobody heard her fall?'

‘Not that I know of. It must have been after midnight, because a man I work with was going home this way from the public house, and she wasn't there then.'

I wished him good afternoon and walked away, Tabby trailing after me.

‘Aren't you going to ask anybody any more questions?'

‘There's no point,' I said. ‘She's not Miss Tilbury. She's too tall and her hair's the wrong colour and there's no birthmark on her wrist.'

‘You saw her then?' She sounded envious.

‘I didn't need to. The police constable told me.'

‘Oh them.'

A vagrant's contempt for the police in her voice, I sensed that my apprentice had found me wanting, so I spoke severely. ‘We do the work we're paid to do. Whatever happened with that poor woman is no business of ours.'

But as we walked away I couldn't help looking back at the Monument and its bright coronet of flames against a grey sky. There seemed something indecently triumphalist about it – as if it were exulting over another victim. I thought of the girl, alone and high up in the dark, hearing voices and seeing lamplight as people went on with their lives below, but her no longer being a part of their world any more.

‘Still, it's a reminder to us,' I said, trying to sound brisk. ‘When you're looking for a missing person, you must be sure to check reports of suicides or accidents.'

‘How do we do that?' She sounded discouraged. Routine was a recently acquired word to her and she didn't like it.

‘I read the newspapers,' I said.

Sullen silence.

‘There's also a man I know who makes his living reporting on coroner's inquests for the papers. I may go and see him this evening.'

‘Can I come with you?'

‘Not this time.'

It might be interesting to see what Tabby and Jimmy Cuffs made of each other, but not yet.

As it happened I didn't make the journey to Fleet Street to see him because when I got home an invitation was waiting for me.

‘A lad brought it while you were out,' Mrs Martley said, rolling pastry.

Embossed printing, my name written on the top left-hand corner in a hand I didn't recognize.