The Butcher of Berner Street Page 5

  ‘Huffam still has that skin infection,’ she said, as though it was something we’d previously discussed. ‘He can’t stop scratching. It’s getting worse.’

  ‘I see.’

  I did not, in fact, see. One only had to sniff the poor canine to know he came into regular contact with all sorts of malignant substances, so it wasn’t surprising he had an irritation of the skin. But how was walking him along a busy street at barely seven in the morning going to help?

  Constance appeared to sense my ignorance.

  ‘A veterinary surgeon will know what to do,’ she explained. ‘He needs a linctus or something. He can’t keep worrying at it or it’ll spread.’

  Now I understood why she seemed to be in such a hurry. She was hoping to get home again before Alfie realised that she’d been gone. He was, by nature, a generous man and his business was doing well, with the pharmacy always popular and a lengthening waiting list for his services as a dentist. But he was saving money to rent a bigger place on Oxford Street and would not be in favour of spending his precious earnings on a poorly dog.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, and proceeded to prove it. ‘Huffam’s not a horse.’

  Constance lengthened her stride. ‘Veterinary surgeons don’t just do horses these days. They know about all kinds of animal. They have qualifications now.’

  Something in her tone piqued my curiosity. ‘Have ladies started doing veterinary surgery?’

  Constance had, for the past year, spent much of her time and almost all of her conversation advancing her desire to enter the medical profession, gradually weakening her father’s resistance to the idea. I would be saddened if, on the brink of success, she was limiting her horizons to becoming a glorified farrier.

  ‘No.’ She stopped at the junction of Cambridge Circus, tapping her foot in frustration as a line of carts rattled slowly past. ‘A woman is permitted to become a doctor for humans but not for animals. It’s absurd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I was considering the topic for the first time. ‘But women doctors treat other women. Problems with childbirth and suchlike. Mares don’t have opinions about the sex of their surgeon, do they?’

  ‘And what does that say about the relative value of women and horses?’ I didn’t follow her argument but fortunately wasn’t required to reply. ‘What do you think of Mrs Thing?’

  ‘Her name is Mrs Gower.’

  Constance took a deep breath and strode out into the road, prompting a pony pulling a trap to shy and bare its teeth. ‘Very well, Mrs Gower then. Do you think she’s all she seems?’

  I was a little surprised. I had thought Constance and her father’s lady-friend had reached some form of truce of late, accepting that the prize they’d been fighting over – viz. Alfie – would otherwise be reduced to a ruin. Mrs Gower had even informed me that, despite her despair at the laxity of the younger generation, she sometimes wished she’d had the chance to be as carefree as Constance. But she’d married young and almost immediately was required to nurse her husband in his illness and eventual death, so all the gaieties and follies of youth had been stolen from her.

  ‘They get on well, don’t you think?’ I ventured. ‘They have a lot in common.’

  In truth, I couldn’t think of much Alfie and Mrs Gower had in common, save dead spouses, but I wasn’t going to say that to Constance.

  ‘Yes, but …’ She pursed her lips. ‘I like the way we are now. Just the three of us.’

  She meant Alfie, herself and me, and I felt a warm glow to be so included. And yet, I knew it couldn’t last. Families were created by birth or marriage, not by the weekly payment of rent.

  ‘Things change, Constance. Alfie would never do anything he didn’t think was in your best interests.’

  We walked on in silence, sullen on her part, until we reached Seven Dials, at which point my route was more southerly and hers straight onwards. As we stopped to bid each other goodbye, it occurred to me that she might be able to help regarding the peculiar method of Mr Drake’s murder. She knew everything about medical procedures that could be learned from books.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask your opinion on a matter.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  She stood up a little straighter, eagerly attentive. It was her oft-stated belief that she was not nearly enough asked her opinion on matters.

  ‘I came across a man recently,’ I continued, ‘who’d been injected with something. The prick of the needle seemed unusually large, easily visible afterwards on his skin. A tenth of an inch or more. Why do you think that might be?’

  She pondered the question while Huffam sat obediently at the hem of her skirt, even ceasing to lick his canker when so instructed. Truly, he did seem more content with her than with me.

  ‘A wider needle allows more volume,’ she said. ‘One that size would normally be used to extract things rather than inject them. Blood or bile.’

  She spoke with no hint of feminine delicacy. She prided herself on being a female of the new type.

  ‘Could a needle like that be used for a hypodermic injection if one wished to?’

  My expertise in medical matters was limited to diagnosing the already dead. I had only the lightest grasp of the techniques used to cure the living.

  ‘Of course, though it would be more painful than with a thinner one. What are the circumstances?’

  I didn’t want to discuss a brutal murder with her, so I checked my pocket watch. It was seven-fifteen.

  ‘Thank you, Constance, but I have to get to work now. You’ve been very helpful.’

  She frowned, and I would doubtless have been interrogated further had she not been in a hurry. She bade me farewell and strode away along Queen Street with Huffam scurrying at her side.

  A fellow of about my age watched her go and licked his lips. I had the urge to poke out both of his eyes. I knew that at thirteen she was not a child, according to the law anyway, but she was utterly unprepared for male attention and had no mother to guide her.

  What had I been like at her age? A complete innocent. The way men had looked at me, up and down, down and up, as if assessing a pony they wished to ride or a cut of lamb they intended to eat, was terrifying. I had hidden from it, wrapping myself in scarves, coats and cardigans, and forever professing myself cold or ill, resisting the slightest touch. My mother pleaded with me daily, saying I should at least try to smile, speak nicely and be more agreeable. I need not be quite so plain, if I would only make an effort.

  So much for mothers, I supposed.

  My article, as it was printed, was brief. I had written two hundred words, but the subeditor reduced it to eighty-five. It spoke highly of Mr Drake’s attention to civic duty, expressed deep regret for his demise and appeared on page nine. I was delighted. It was my most prominent piece since becoming a professional journalist the previous year.

  I was hoping to write a further story about the police investigation, but my request was declined by J. T., who said I could add to the body of knowledge on the subject of dead wrestlers when the killer was in court and not before. I pointed out that Mr Drake was the proprietor of the establishment and not a wrestler himself, but J. T. was already engrossed in a paragraph about an exhibition at the Crystal Palace and wasn’t listening. I therefore returned to my more customary duties as science correspondent, which on that day amounted to a review of a book by a Mr Paul entitled Clever Things Said by Children. I had long come to realise that the elder Mr Whitford held a broad interpretation of the word ‘science’.

  Nevertheless, the words would not flow, and I had written and rewritten the review three times before hurling my final attempt into the wastepaper basket and heading for home. That evening, a Friday as it happened, I drank whisky with Alfie until late, and by the time I got into bed, I had almost forgotten about the death of Mr Drake. I was thinking rather of the following Sunday afternoon, when I would spend some time with my young friends Aiden and Ciara Cowdery, whom I had rescued the previous year. They lived at the Home for Penitent Females, where their adoptive mother, in fact their aunt, was the matron. She had strong political views and it was her habit to campaign every other Sunday for the Christian Socialists while I took Aiden and Ciara out for a treat. Sometimes we had tea and cakes in a shop and sometimes we played draughts, but on the best days, when the weather was dry and breezy, we carried our kite to Regent’s Park and took turns at flying it. Watching the children’s faces as they clung on to the string was one of my greatest joys. The last time, Ciara, who was not yet eight years old, had been pulled off her feet by a sudden squall, and the rain drenched us all to the skin.

  I was musing on the idea of tying the string to a block of wood so she could hold on to it more easily, when I heard a sound downstairs. Someone was in the yard.

  I lit a candle and peeped down through the curtain, but the night was so dark I could only make out vague shapes between the scuttle and the corrugated roof of the privy.

  I pulled up the sash of my window.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I called down. ‘This is a private house. Go away.’

  There was no reply, but I was certain I could see movement.

  My candle blew out and I fumbled on my table for another match, but in my haste, I couldn’t find one. Perhaps, I thought, I should call Alfie, but after my cowardice at the penny gaff I didn’t want to rely on another man to save me. I should be able to deal with this on my own.

  I wrapped myself in my dressing gown and crept down the stairs.

  The back room was filled with boxes of remedies stacked five high, looming over me. I groped my way forward to the window, and as I peered out, the blackness of the room gave me an unexpected advantage: I could see the yard more clearly.

  Standing in the centre was the Hungarian Lad
y Vostek.

  She approached the back door but stopped, mouth open, lifting a tentative palm in greeting and then lowering it again. It occurred to me that she might be a fugitive from the police. Or, of course, she might have already proven her innocence to Ripley with a straightforward alibi. Or she might have come to kill me. I had no idea.

  I found a match in the dresser and lit my candle, and the sudden flame made the window into a mirror. My heart was beating so loudly I could almost hear it, but still I pulled back the bolt on the door. What else could I do? Drake’s murder had been my most prominent ever article, and Irina Vostek might be about to confess to the crime or tell me who was the culprit. How could I call myself a journalist if I spurned a revelation like that?

  I pushed open the door, shivering in the sudden chill.

  She was soaking wet, trailing the damp hem of her dress as she came in.

  ‘I am very sorrowful,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I did not want to make disturbance.’

  Her accent was as dense as porridge, but for reasons I couldn’t quite identify, her choice of words struck me as peculiar. I wondered whether she was giving the impression of speaking worse English than she actually did.

  ‘What do you want?’

  She was twice my volume at least but only an inch or so taller, with a tugboat jaw and a face crowded with features as though they’d been designed for someone built to an even larger scale. In the candlelight, the bruise on her cheek was a kaleidoscope of colours, from yellow to green and mauve. The overall effect was intimidating, to say the least, and yet she wore a contrite expression, as though she was an old chum visiting me unexpectedly for the afternoon.

  ‘Do not be frightened,’ she said. ‘I mean nothing of harm …’ she paused and sneezed explosively, causing me to leap backwards. When she’d recovered, she continued. ‘I want speak to Mr Stanhope, journalist at Chronicle newspaper.’ She squinted at me, examining my face in the flickering candlelight. ‘You are sister of Mr Stanhope, yes?’

  5

  She had assumed I was female. I felt my face blush pink and was grateful there was no more illumination in the room. It was profoundly shocking to discover that, without my suit and jacket and the other trappings of maleness, a stranger could so easily take me for a woman.

  Was my physical reality so thinly veiled?

  I was stuck in a cruel quandary. I could either inform her that I was Leo Stanhope and risk her guessing my secret, or I could allow her to continue believing I was not and betray my very self.

  But that decision was long since made.

  I gathered my dressing gown around my chest and stood up straighter. ‘You’re mistaken,’ I declared. ‘I’m Leo Stanhope. We met at the penny gaff, remember?’

  She put her hands to her mouth. ‘Oh, so sorry. My mistake. My eyes, you know?’ She fluttered her fingers in front of her face. ‘Candles in the dark. Everything shining and I can’t see clear.’

  My mother had suffered the same way, among her many other ailments.

  ‘You may have cataracts.’ I offered, feeling idiotic. It was a terrible habit, to rest upon scientific exposition to hide my nervousness. And yet I seemed unable to stop myself. ‘You can get them treated.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked perplexed. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘I would imagine so.’ I almost shook myself with irritation. ‘How did you know where I live?’

  She took one of the chairs, without being offered. ‘I followed you yesterday.’

  ‘Then why are you here so late tonight?’

  She shrugged. ‘I had other duties. And I needed time to think. Oswald Drake is dead. Him was murdered.’

  ‘I know.’

  She leaned forward and I pushed the candle further away on the table, easing myself into a chair.

  ‘I am not criminal, Mr Stanhope. You must not write that I am a murderer in your Chronicle. Was not me. I will go away and not come back, but not because I am guilty of killing Mr Drake.’

  ‘Where will you go? Back to Hungary?’

  She folded her formidable arms and I noticed she had a bandage on her wrist. ‘Home is not easy for me but is the place I belong.’

  ‘Why run away if you’re not guilty?’

  ‘The policemen will look at me and think, I am obvious … what is the word? Someone police accuse?’

  ‘A suspect?’

  ‘Yes, this. A suspect. Mr Trafford tells me I am the first suspect.’ She pursed her lips, tears forming in her eyes, though they didn’t fall. ‘There are things I wish not to tell policemen. Many things. But I don’t want hang like Mr Drake. Mr Drake was a very bad man. Very bad. He deserve to die, yes. But I no deserve to die. It was not me who kill him.’

  I was watching her closely, but she didn’t falter. If she wasn’t being honest, she was a very good liar. But there was still something strange about how she spoke, as though she was consciously picking each word, one at a time.

  ‘What was it about Mr Drake that you didn’t approve of, Miss Vostek? Why do you claim he was a bad man?’

  ‘Claim? I don’t claim anything.’ She made a fist and seemed about to pound it on the arm of the chair, which was rickety and might not have survived the assault, but she restrained herself and interlocked her fingers in her lap. ‘I say the truth, Mr Stanhope. All men are worthy in the eyes of God, but Mr Drake was less worthy than most, I think.’

  I was surprised. Before, she had seemed annoyed by Drake, even angry with him, but now I realised she actually hated him. I wondered why. He had seemed … not entirely trustworthy, certainly, but admirable in his way. Why would she harbour such animosity towards a man who pressed farthings into the palms of beggar children and gave them a place to sleep?

  ‘Can you be more specific?’

  She sat forward, her elbows on the table, and for a moment her face was lit by the candle. Her eyes were shining with tears.

  ‘No. He is dead and it is done. All finished. I go home and think no more of Mr Drake.’

  ‘Do you know who killed him?’

  She shook her head and stood up.

  ‘Perhaps he is sorry for his sins and he hang himself. Or somebody else hang him. What is the word … revenge? Perhaps this.’ She nodded firmly. ‘Revenge, yes.’

  She was looking down at me where I sat, a frown forming slowly on her overbearing forehead. Her eyes flicked to my neck, my wrists, my fingers, which were autumn twigs compared with her own. I squared my shoulders and shrank back further into the shadows.

  ‘Is that everything you have to tell me?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I go now. Goodbye.’

  I remained in my seat. By rights, I should have shown her out through the front door, but I couldn’t bear the thought of her following me through to the pharmacy, so she left as she had come.

  I put my head in my hands, feeling sweaty and breathless. If she’d guessed what I was underneath these clothes, then my secret was no longer safe. I knew what would happen if she told the police. Barely two weeks previously, a woman in Warwick had been sentenced to seven years of penal servitude for pretending to be a man. She wasn’t like me, she was simply intent on committing a fraud, but that distinction would count for little if I was arrested. Harry had written the article, sniggering all the while, and the memory of what he’d said was scorched on to my brain:

  ‘How could anyone be fooled by such a claim? What about …?’ He mimed a pair of fulsome breasts in case I wasn’t sure what kind of problems might present themselves. ‘She’ll be thankful they sent her to a women’s prison or she’d have been ravaged ten times a day.’

  He was right about the women’s prison. I would be given a dress, a bonnet and whatever name they chose for me. I would never tell them the one I was born with. I’d taken many names in my life, so another wouldn’t hurt me. Better that than suffer my sister’s sanctimony; such an irony that she felt justified in her condemnation, but she’d been born Jane Pritchard and had become Mrs Howard Hemmings. She’d disappeared as completely as I had.

  To calm myself, I started to list all the names I’d ever used, backwards through time: Leo Stanhope, Maurice Stanhope, Maurice Jackson, George … damn, I couldn’t even remember the surname. That was my brief period selling books door to door. And before that, Thomas Manly – a foolish choice – and before that … I shivered at the memory. The first name I’d taken while I was still furious with the world, with God, with my father, with anyone who stood in my way: Tom Cobb. That poor, reckless boy, with nowhere to lay his head.