Birdcage Walk (27 page)

The next day dawned as bright as the previous day. George had been exhausted enough to sleep this time and his head felt clearer for it. Knowing he was closer to home than he had been at the barracks had also been a crumb of comfort. He was the right side of the river again, and less than a mile north of home. Behind bars somewhere between Hoxton and the marshes, he tried to think only of his journeys with his father to catch the birds, and not Charlotte’s last night alive up there. The two of them, carrying the cage and its songbird, must have passed close to the police station. How strange to think of a younger version of himself walking by outside, in another time, and quite unable to guess that one day he would be locked up inside.

After another paltry breakfast, George was taken to a different room from the day before, one without a stick of furniture in it. Pearn and McArthur were already there, Pearn pacing the room in his desire to begin proceedings. George wondered what else they could possibly ask him and vowed anew not to mention the Drews. He was willing to lie if necessary; he could make up some other girl he’d seen and liked if he had to.

“Woolfe, you will be glad to know that you have not been brought here to endure any more of my questions. Not today, at any rate. I have organised an identification parade. Do you know what that is?”

George nodded.

“I do, sir. But I have already been identified by my sister.”

Pearn laughed.

“No, no. The purpose of today’s parade is not to ascertain that you are George Woolfe. In fact, your name is irrelevant today. Most of the witnesses I have gathered did not know your name before it was in the papers. They believe they saw you on the night of the murder with the victim, but in order to satisfy the laws of this land, they must pick you out of a line-up.”

“Sometimes people who say they were witnesses were not there at all,” McArthur spoke up for the first time. “It’s ghoulish, of course, but some get a thrill from being close to a case. They’ll say anything to be part of it. The line-up will weed them out, though it doesn’t allow for those who know the accused and have a separate grievance against them.”

Pearn looking disapprovingly at his colleague.

“Of course, mistakes will be made. But that’s why we don’t take the word of just one witness. Now, Woolfe, we have seven other men for your line-up and you may choose where you stand in the line. When we bring each witness in, and we have . . . “ He consulted his list, “five of them due in this morning, we will not interfere with them once they are brought in. They will walk the line alone so there is no possibility of prejudicial treatment. If you have any sense, you will look straight ahead and stay silent. Do not make eye contact with the witnesses. I will be giving precisely the same instructions to the volunteers.”

It was cold in the room, colder even than George’s cell. There were no windows at eye-level, only a strip of glass running round the top of the wall. He understood now why there was no furniture; no one would be sitting down. The seven volunteers were led in. One of them looked excited to be there, but the others looked bored. George wondered how much they got paid for their troubles and whether they often did if work elsewhere was slow.

Though the room wasn’t small, it felt cramped with so many people unfamiliar to each other in it. All of them looked at George when two constables led him forward to choose his place. Under their scrutiny, he felt his face redden and cursed his propensity to blush. He had always found it humiliating and remembered with a jolt how often Charlotte had teased him, just for the simple pleasure of watching the colour flood his cheeks. Now he realised it could be the end of him; a case partly constructed on the guilt inferred from such a harmless habit.

He stood in front of the men and wondered where to put himself. None of them looked like him. He couldn’t object that any of them looked absurdly unlike him: no one was over six feet tall, or fat, or ginger-haired. But none of them had his sallow skin and black eyes. Perhaps it would be clever to go at the very end or very beginning of the line, no witness would expect that, would they? But he found himself choosing a more central position, as though the proximity of the strangers’ shoulders, and the warmth their bodies gave off, would be somehow fortifying.

He was surprised to recognise the first witness, having assumed they would all be unknown to him, figures he had perhaps passed in the street near the Britannia or, much more worryingly, who had sat near him on the omnibuses to and from Tottenham. The man was named Dent, he remembered as if from nowhere. He was a barman at the Southgate Arms. George thought back to Christmas Eve, and where he had gone after leaving the Highbury house but before he met Charlotte on the bridge. He hadn’t gone to the Southgate, he was sure of it. Perhaps Dent had seen him on the bridge. That wouldn’t prove anything.

He was a large man who George had only previously seen installed behind the bar. Away from his place of work he looked ungainly. He didn’t look ahead as he walked down the line but instead stared into each face carefully as he worked his way along. When he got to George, who had chosen a place two from the end of the line, he stopped a fraction longer, though his eyes darted away when George looked back at him. He had meant to heed Pearn’s warning not to meet any of the witness’ eyes but, knowing Dent, he found it impossible not to. Although he knew the barman only slightly—he and Charlotte frequenting the Rosemary Branch more often—he was grateful to him for lingering for just as long on the faces of the seventh and eighth men in the line, even though he must have recognised George. When he reached the end, he muttered something inaudible to McArthur, who was waiting poised with a notebook and pencil.

The other four witnesses seemed to be strangers to George at first. They were brought in one at a time, two men and two women. The ladies evidently knew each other and when they were reunited at the end of the line they conferred in whispers until McArthur turned to frown at them. George supposed this was a day of excitement to them; they would go home giggling and gasping over it and then over dinner they would tell their families how close they had come to the Marshes Murderer that day. ‘I was so close to him he could have reached out and grabbed my throat,’ they would say, thrilled. He couldn’t tell whether they identified him correctly or not. One of them, stout in a dress she had long outgrown, had lingered when she reached one of the other fellows, though she also looked into George’s face long and hard. He had only just resisted looking back at her, willing his cheeks to remain cool.

The two men he realised he did vaguely recognise. He was glad he couldn’t initially place their faces; thinking of it distracted him during the time they took their turns walking down the line towards him. One of them very deliberately took his time, George realised he was enjoying the power of it. He was a small man, slighter than George; he could have passed for a boy in his father’s cap from the back though his face was lined. He hardly bothered to look at the last two volunteers in the line and, unlike the others, George distinctly heard him give George’s number to McArthur.

As he stood there, relieved he hadn’t collapsed or shouted out or given himself away any more than he could have helped it, he trawled back over that fateful evening before Christmas. Suddenly there they were, as clear as if he was back there looking at them the first time round, with Charlotte by his side as she sipped at her smeary glass of gin. It was the Park Hotel he knew them from and the realisation formed like a stone in his gut. They had come in just after he and Charlotte had sat down, only there had been four of them then. They had glanced over at Charlotte and he’d been cross about it. He hadn’t remembered them at first because at the time he’d only really been conscious of their friend. There had been something unsettling about his face that drew the eye. It wasn’t until George was back in his cell, the key turning in the door, that his memory gave up the image; the too-soft, unshaven cheeks and the child’s eyes.

He’d sat there in the gloom for a time, only half-awake, when a clattering at the door announced someone’s arrival. He thought for a second that his father had been allowed to see him but this was dashed when he saw the bulky shadow of Inspector McArthur in the doorway. He was silent for a time, his eyes adjusting to the poor light in the cell. George waited and eventually the other man spoke softly.

“You’re to speak to Chief Inspector Pearn again tomorrow morning so make sure you get some sleep. You’ll need your wits about you.”

He was quiet again then, as though he wasn’t sure himself why he had come.

“I was on my way home and thought I would put my head round the door,” he said finally.

“Sir, can you tell me anything about the identification?” asked George. “I didn’t recognise anyone but Dent, the barman from the Southgate.” He felt guilty for lying to McArthur about the men he knew from the Park Hotel but it was far too late to admit to going anywhere with Charlotte after the Britannia. If they knew he had lied about that, there was no reason for them to believe anything else he said.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t say but I don’t see what harm it can do. Pearn will tell you tomorrow anyway. Both the ladies picked you out, and the smaller fellow did too.”

“But if one of them got it wrong couldn’t the others have made a mistake too?”

“That’s not for me to decide. Pearn will want to ask you about it in the morning so I won’t say any more now. Goodnight, Woolfe. Try and get some rest.”

The door clanged shut again and George listened to McArthur’s steps retreat slowly until he could no longer make them out above the other sounds in the station. The doors shutting, one always with a long, drawn-out shriek; the rubber soles of the constables’ boots squeaking along the hallways; the low hum of voices and scraping of furniture in the offices above him. Even in the smallest hours there was noise here and he was grateful for it, not wishing to hear Charlotte’s voice run on in his head instead.

When Clemmie had read the news that George had been arrested, her initial reaction had been relief, though she felt dreadful for it. She and Milly had been studying the paper each day between them and whispering so much that Mrs. Drew had been quite put out and reminded them of their manners.

He was being held at Stoke Newington police station which, she realised with a fluttering in her stomach, was within walking distance of Aberdeen Park.

“I will go and see him,” she said to Milly in the kitchen, where Mrs. Drew seldom ventured. “If I go when mother has her sleep in the afternoon she won’t even miss me.”

“You will not go,” said Milly, her expression scandalised. “You, who has never gone to the haberdasher’s on Upper Street for a length of ribbon by yourself? Do you honestly think I would let you go prancing off to a police station in Stoke Newington in your kid slippers? I don’t think so, miss.”

Seeing the tears well in Clemmie’s eyes, she softened her voice.

“It wouldn’t do any good. He won’t be allowed to see anyone yet. Not while they’re questioning him. And if he is, it’ll be his family, not a lady from Highbury. You don’t know, Miss Clemmie, it might even make things worse for him, you showing up unannounced.”

“But I would tell them that he’s a good person and that he wouldn’t have hurt anyone and they will have to listen to me.”

Milly led her mistress over to a chair and pushed her gently down.

“That’s just it, miss, they won’t listen. They’ll think you’re a nosy do-gooder at best, and a hysteric at worst. Besides, I won’t have you weakening yourself further. You’re still as pale as you were when you first saw about the murder in the Gazette and your mama’s fretting about it.”

Clemmie suddenly looked up sharply and put down the cup of tea Milly had foisted on her.

“What about you then?”

“What about me?”

“You could go and see George, ask at the station to see how he is. You could say you’re his sister. You’re dark and small like him and you could wear your old hat, they would believe you.”

“You mean I look like I was dragged up in Hoxton? Thanks very much.”

Clemmie grasped hold of Milly’s hand before she could flounce back to her polishing.

“I didn’t mean it like that. You know what I mean, Milly. I so wish you would do this for me, if not for George. I think I will only get worse if I don’t hear some news of him that’s not in the paper. I might go mad if I sit here doing nothing any longer.”

Milly was sceptical but then she looked down at Clemmie’s waxen complexion and wondered if she might risk it for her. If she said she was his sister, surely there was no harm in it. She doubted she would be able to see him, but perhaps her trying would put her mistress’s mind at rest. She wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but she was intrigued too. She loved her collection of dog-eared penny dreadfuls, which she kept stored in an old boot box under her bed in the attic, and she had never known anyone who was murdered before.

“I’ll go,” she announced and was gratified to see some colour leach back into Clemmie’s smooth cheeks. “But if I do and I can’t get to see him then I don’t want you going on at me about it night and day, is that clear?”

Clemmie embraced her fiercely, her eyes shining.

“Oh, thank you, Milly. You are so good to me. I feel so much better already, knowing that we can do something. When can you go?”

“Not today. Your mama’s bridge ladies are due at three and they’ll be wanting sandwiches and all sorts. Tomorrow afternoon is the earliest I can slip out without being missed.”

Clemmie’s face fell briefly but then she smiled again: another day might not matter too much.

“You mustn’t be expecting any miracles, mind. I don’t know what you think I can do for him.”

Clemmie was hardly listening. If Milly could get word to George that she didn’t believe he had done it then perhaps it would strengthen him. She knew a desperate man would sometimes confess to a crime he hadn’t committed because he had lost all hope. Another idea formed in her head. If she told her godfather about it, he might be able to somehow intervene on George’s behalf. She was cross with herself that it hadn’t occurred to her before. Her father’s good friend Charles Booth had turned from being a wealthy shipping merchant into a well-known philanthropist, a champion for London’s poor. In a year he would be publishing the final volume of his great study.

Clemmie darted up the stairs to her room. Her mother, hearing her light step from the drawing room, hoped that her daughter was finally recovering her spirits. When Clemmie reached her room she locked the door as silently as she could. She was forbidden to do it in case she fainted or was taken ill but no one would realise if she was quick. She drew a fresh sheet of paper out from inside her desk and dipped her pen in the inkwell. ‘Dear Uncle Charles,’ she began.