Bethlehem Road (34 page)

He knew Royce was afraid; he could see it in his eyes, in the fierce stare, in the nervous line of his mouth and the rigid way he held himself, seeming oblivious of the chill breeze and the clamor of other people busy less than twenty feet away, and yet for him they might have been geese on a lawn or pigeons in Trafalger Square.

“You are a brave man, Sir Garnet,” he said honestly. “I accept your offer. I wish we could do it without you, but it seems we cannot.” He saw Royce’s chin rise a little higher, and the muscles in his throat tighten. The the was cast. “We shall be within a few yards of you all the time—cabbies, street vendors, drunks. I give you my word, we shall not allow you to be hurt.” Please God he could keep it!

He told Pitt the following morning, sitting in his office by a roaring fire. The sight of its flames leaping up the chimney and the flicker and crackle of it seemed like an island of safety, a living companion as he thought of the night on the bridge. He had still had to cross it after speaking to Royce, still setting out at a measured pace into the gloom between the lamps, his footsteps falling dully on the wet pavement, veils of mist rising from the dark sheet of the water below, lights and voices from the bank distorted, far away.

Pitt was staring at him.

“Is there any other way?” Drummond asked helplessly. “We’ve got to stop her!”

“I know,” Pitt agreed. “And if there’s another way, I don’t know what it is.”

“I’ll be there,” Drummond added. “I can pretend to be a drunk coming home from the opera—”

“No!—sir!” Pitt was firm; at another time, with another man it would have been considered rudeness. “Sir, if we need Royce, then it is because the cutthroat knows you are not an M.P. For this to succeed Royce has to appear vulnerable, a victim alone, not a police decoy. You can’t come any nearer than the Victoria Embankment. We’ll have three constables at the far end, so he cannot escape that way, and we’ll speak to the River Police so he doesn’t get over the bridge and down to the water—though God knows how he’d do that. We’ll have two constables dressed as street vendors at the House end, and I’ll drive a cab across when Royce actually goes. If I stay a bit behind I can watch him; I’ll get close enough without frightening anyone off. People always assume cabbies are watching the road.”

“Can’t we put a man actually on the bridge? As a drunk, or a beggar?” Drummond’s face was pale, his nostrils pinched, and there was a transparent look to the skin across the top of his nose and under his eyes.

“No.” Pitt felt no indecision. “If there is anyone else there, we’ll frighten the cutthroat off.”

Drummond tried one last time. “I gave Royce my word we’d protect him!”

There was nothing to say. They knew the dangers, and they understood that there was nothing else they could do.

For the next three nights the House rose early, and they kept watch, but with small hope of anything occurring. The fourth night the sky was heavy with unshed rain. The light was thin and darkness came early. The lamps along the Embankment looked like a string of fallen moons. The air smelled damp, and up and down the river the barges moved like wedges of darkness slicing the whispering, hissing water, with its broken reflections.

Under the statue of Boadicea with its magnificent horses, hooves flying, chariot careering forever in doomed heroic fight against the Roman invader dead two thousand years ago, a constable stood dressed as a sandwich vendor, his barrow in front of him, his neck muffled against the cold, his fingers blue in spite of his mittens, eyes watchful, waiting for Garnet Royce and ready to move out and follow him the moment anyone approached. His truncheon was hidden under his overcoat, but his hand knew exactly where it was.

At the entrance to the House of Commons another constable, dressed as a footman, stood to attention as though waiting for his master to approach with some message, but his eyes were searching for Garnet Royce—and a flower seller.

At the far end of the bridge on the south bank three more constables waited; two on foot dressed as gentlemen with nothing better to do than idle away an evening looking for a little female company, and perhaps a trifle the worse for drink. The third constable drove a cab, which he kept standing twenty yards from the end of the bridge outside the first house on Bellevue Road, as though attending a fare who was visiting someone and might shortly return.

Micah Drummond stood in a doorway well out of the light on the Victoria Embankment and strained bis eyes towards the New Palace Yard and the members of Parliament leaving. He could not make out any individuals, but he was as close as he dared be. He kept his face in shadow, his silk hat pulled forward and his scarf high round his chin. A passerby would have taken him for a gentleman who had celebrated rather too liberally and had stopped until his head cleared before going home. No one gave him a second glance.

Somewhere down the river towards the Pool of London the foghorns were sounding as the mist thickened and swept up with the incoming tide.

On the north bank, Pitt sat on the box of a second cab, on the Victoria Embankment just above the steps down to the water. He could see them all: the height of the cab seat gave him a vantage and also made his face less easy to recognize by a person on foot. He held the reins loosely in his hands while the horse shifted its weight restlessly.

Someone hailed him, and he called back, “Sorry guv, got a fare.”

The man grumbled that he could see none but did not bother to argue.

Minutes ticked by. The members were beginning to disperse. The constable sold some of his sandwiches. Pitt hoped he did not sell them all, or he would have no excuse to remain there. A vendor out on a night like this, at this hour, with no wares to sell, would draw suspicion.

Where was Royce? What on earth was he doing? Pitt could not blame him if his courage had failed; it would take a strong man to walk alone across Westminster Bridge tonight.

Big Ben struck quarter past eleven.

Pitt was longing to get down and go and look for Royce. If he had left by another way and gone west to Lambeth Bridge in a cab, they might wait here all night!

“Cabby! Twenty-five Great Peter Street. Come on, man! You’re half asleep!”

“Sorry sir, I’ve already got a fare.”

“Nonsense! There’s no one here. Now pull yourself together and get a move on!” The man was middle-aged and brisk, his graying hair waved neatly and his expression was fast becoming irritated. He reached out a hand to open the cab door.

“I already have a fare, sir!” Pitt said sharply, his nerves betraying the fear he tried to force from his mind. “He’s in there!” he poked a gloved finger in the general direction of the buildings along the Embankment. “I’ve got to wait for him.”

The man swore under his breath and turned on his heel. He was an M.P. Pitt remembered seeing his photograph in
The Illustrated London News;
striking-looking man, well dressed, and—suddenly Pitt was as cold as if he had been drenched in ice water. He saw again in his mind’s eye the pale blur of the flowers in the man’s buttonhole—primroses!

His hand clenched so tight the horse started, throwing its head, and the harness clanked.

In his doorway Micah Drummond stiffened, but he could see nothing except Pitt, rigid on the cab box.

The wail of a foghorn drifted upriver and the lights reflected in the water danced along the shore.

Garnet Royce was coming down the street. He called out loudly to someone, his voice husky; he was frightened. His steps were uneven as he passed the sandwich vendor and started across the bridge. His back was straight, shoulders stiff, and never once did he look behind him.

Pitt moved his horse forward a few yards. A man with an umbrella passed between him and Royce. The sandwich vendor left his barrow, and the footman stopped looking in the direction of the New Palace Yard and walked towards the bridge as if he had changed his mind about waiting.

From the black shadow under Boadicea another figure appeared: heavyset, broad-backed, a thick shawl round her shoulders and carrying a vendor’s tray of flowers. She ignored the footman—natural enough, footmen seldom bought flowers—and moved surprisingly swiftly after Royce across the bridge. He was walking steadily in the center of the footpath, looking neither right nor left, concentrating on the lights. He was precisely halfway across.

Micah Drummond came out of his doorway.

Pitt urged the horse forward into a brisk walk and turned it left over the bridge. He was only two or three yards behind the flower seller. He could see her figure silhouetted against the paler mist beyond. She was walking soft-footed, gaining on Royce. He did not seem to hear her.

He left the milky haze of one lamp with its triple globes and entered the void of darkness beyond. The mist was silver round the lights, and the droplets in the air gleamed like something beautiful and strange. His back was lit, showing the breadth of his shoulders, the precise angle of the rim of his hat, and his face was a mere lessening of the shadow, anonymous as he strode into the hollow of night between one lamp and the next.

Pitt held the reins so tightly his nails dug into his palms even through the wet wool of his mittens. He could feel the sweat cold on his body.

“Flowers, sir? You buy sweet primroses, sir?” The voice was hardly audible, high, like a little girl’s.

Royce spun round. He was close enough to the light for his features to show clearly: his hair was hidden by the hat, but the sweeping brow was plain, the vivid eyes, the big bones. He saw the woman and the tray of primroses. He saw her take a bunch of flowers in one hand, the other drawing something from underneath them. His mouth opened in a soundless exclamation of terror—and glittering, superb victory.

Pitt let go of the reins and leapt from the cab box, landing hard on the slippery road. The woman swung her arm up with the razor in her hand, its blade open and shining in the light. “I got yer!” she screamed, flinging the tray off and sending the flowers spinning and scattering on the stones. “I got yer at last, Royce!”

Pitt was on top of her, bringing his truncheon down on her shoulder. The pain of it stopped her, brought her round sharply, face blank with surprise, the razor still high.

For a second they were all motionless: the madwoman with her black eyes and mouth open, the blade still in the air, Pitt with the truncheon clenched in his hand, and Royce ten feet beyond them.

Then Royce’s hand went to his pocket, and before the woman could move, the shot rang out, and she took a stumbling step towards Pitt. There was another shot, and another, and she fell into the road and lay across the gutter, blood soaking her shawl, the razor tinkling thinly on the stones and the pale blossoms of the primroses lying around her.

Pitt bent over her for a moment. There was nothing to do. She was dead, shot cleanly through the heart from behind, as well as through the shoulder and the chest. He had no idea which bullet had killed her; it might have been any of the three.

He stood up slowly and looked at Royce, who was still standing with the gun in his hand, a revolver, black and polished, no longer hidden in the deep overcoat pocket. Royce’s face was white, almost drained of expression; the fear had too recently left him.

“Good God, man—you nearly got yourself killed!” he said huskily. He passed his hand over his eyes and blinked, as though dizzy. He looked down at the woman. “Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” Royce went towards her but stopped more than a yard away. He passed the gun to Pitt, who took it reluctantly. Royce stared at the woman. “Although perhaps it is for the best. Poor creature may at last be at peace. This is cleaner than a rope.”

Pitt could find no argument. Hanging was a grotesque and terrible thing, and why drag out a trial for a woman who was so patently insane? He faced Royce and tried to think of something appropriate to say.

“Thank you, Sir Garnet. We appreciate your courage—without it we might never have caught her.” He held out his hand.

The constables were there from the south side of the bridge, and the pie vendor and the footman were approaching just beyond the circle of light. Micah Drummond stopped on the pavement and stared at the woman, then at Pitt and Royce.

Royce took Pitt’s hand and wrung it so hard the flesh was bruised.

Micah Drummond knelt down and looked at the woman, moving the shawl away from her face, opening the front of it and searching for some mark of identity.

“Do you know her, sir?” he asked Royce.

“Know her? Good God, no!”

Drummond looked at her again, and when he turned back to them his voice was quiet, touched with compassion as well as horror.

“Some of her clothing comes from Bedlam. It looks as if she was in the asylum recently.”

Pitt remembered what the woman’s last words had been. He stared at Royce. “She knew you,” he said quietly, very levelly. “She called you by name.”

Royce was motionless, his eyes wide; then very slowly he went and looked down at the dead woman. No one spoke. Another foghorn sounded on the river.

“I—I’m not certain, but if she really has come from Bedlam, then it could be Elsie Draper, poor creature. She was lady’s maid to my wife, seventeen years ago. She was a country woman, came with Naomi when we were married. Elsie was devoted to her, and when Naomi died she took it very badly. She became deranged, and we were obliged to have her committed. I—I admit, I had no idea she was homicidally insane. I wonder how in the name of heaven she came to be free.”

“We haven’t been notified of an escape,” Drummond answered. “Presumably she was released. After seventeen years they may have thought her safe.”

Royce gasped. “Safe!” The word hung in the damp air, with the slow-curling mist glowing in the lamplight.

“Come,” Drummond stood up. “We’ll get a mortuary van and take her away. Pitt, get your cab and take Sir Garnet home to ... ?”

“Bethlehem Road,” Royce replied. “Thank you. I confess, I feel suddenly very tired, and colder than I thought.”

“Naturally we’re very grateful.” Drummond offered his hand. “All London is much in your debt.”