Authors: Barbara Cleverly
‘Why did you do that? It was my grandfather’s bag. And very precious to me,’ she said, hoping to elicit a response she could understand.
‘Inherited goods mean nothing. They weigh one down. There it goes – the sweat, the screams, the bloodstains. The memories. It’s not popped back up again … it’s settling to rot on the river bed. Gone.’
‘I haven’t much of a past to let go,’ said Lily. ‘I can’t afford to be so cavalier with the little I have.’
‘Poor creature.’ There was no sympathy in the voice. ‘You are upset by the loss of a dirty old bag? I have lost the world. A country. A family. A fortune. A name. All I have left is my life and what is that to anyone? An embarrassment. An anachronism. Even a threat. I’ve become a danger to Aunt Tizzi and my own people. Time to move on.’ Her eyes were drawn in fascination again to the water. ‘They tell me this is the most popular spot in London for suicide. One sees why. How those dark depths call one to oblivion!’
She dropped Lily’s arm and edged a few paces further on to the bridge. She put her hands on the parapet, leaning dangerously forward to stare into the river.
Lily sidled after her. She recognized suicidal despair in the girl’s voice and at last realized why she’d been brought here. Many people killed themselves quietly, dying alone in holes and corners all over London, hugging their unbearable sorrows to their breast. But some – those who seemed to bear a grudge against society – preferred to go with a flourish, screaming out their hatred … or their guilt. Lily knew with a chilling certainty that she’d been chosen, lured on to the bridge, to hear the last words, to witness such a death.
‘I’ve stood here before, you know. Many times. Never quite having the courage … and always stopped by the same thought. Do you suppose, Lily, that if one were to jump, and … natural impulses changed one’s mind at the last moment, one could swim to the bank from here?’
Lily prepared to share her suffering and her speculation. She looked down into the water and shuddered. ‘It’s possible,’ she lied. ‘You might survive. But of course it would depend on the strength of the undertow and the swimming skill of the jumper. Only a strong swimmer would make it. You’d have to be very certain that you really wanted to die and weren’t just calling attention to your own sorrow.’ She remembered with a stab of pity that the moody girl at her side was the survivor of rape, slavery and goodness only knew what other horrors. Horrors which, if Sandilands and his psychiatrist had it right, had affected her mind with the destructive force of unremitting shelling.
Alert to the slightest hint of a suicidal move, Lily closed in on Anna. She assessed her chances of preventing a determined dive off the bridge as poor. The girl was taller and stronger; her arms appeared well muscled from weeks of hotel work. And she was as tense as a bowstring.
Lily scanned the bridge. She needed help. This would be a good moment to catch sight of the police patrolman approaching. Not a sign of him. A few tourists wandered from side to side at the far end, chirruping and pointing. Too slow to react … useless.
Talk. Calm reason. Understanding. That was her best – her only – tool.
‘You’ve been
half in love with easeful Death
? I can understand that. Very well. Let the past go then, Anna,’ Lily said. ‘But I’m wondering whether you have the same disregard for the future. You have a future. Have you had a chance to consider the offer I left with the princess? Is that what you’re doing here? You’ve chased after me to thank me for handing you a new life and an old friendship?’ She was trying for a lighter note in a conversation whose sense she could barely grasp.
‘Nonsense! You haven’t seen it at all, have you? This letter, purportedly from a friend in California, is an elaborate charade! You want to be rid of me.’ Her laughter was sharp and scathing. ‘Who but the English, sensing a threat to their Establishment, would hold back their secret police killers and send in a single girl armed with a few sheets of paper? This is a parlour game – an entertaining piece of whimsy!’
She took Sam Scrivener’s page of meticulous work from her pocket, tore it in two and threw it after the bag into the river. She leaned far over to watch the pieces swirl and dance on the dark surface, drawing a cry of concern from Lily.
‘May I expect to see the tickets for the
Hirondelle
follow?’ she asked, reaching out to take Anna’s arm. She was beginning to lose patience with this haughty girl but she would never allow her to jump. She persevered. ‘It would be a pity not to see the western ocean. We have a poet I think you must like – a man who died young … no older than we are, Anna. Keats had never set eyes on the Pacific … was never likely to have the chance … but he wrote four lines which would make anyone yearn to do that.’
She murmured them, careful not to allow emotion to take over.
‘…
like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
‘It’s all about eagerness to seize the next experience, to watch the next horizon come into view … the elation of discovery.’
‘Ah, that was you, the line of verse? You have strange skills for a policewoman. The tickets? Entirely appropriate and welcome. Those I shall keep and use. But not for the reason you ascribe to me. Do you think I could be deceived by a clumsy lie? Fools! What an irony. There will be no wild surmise for me on the heights … no Russian welcoming committee on the quay.’
She turned at last to face Lily directly and spoke with emphasis. ‘In San Francisco there are no Romanovs. No Tatiana, no Tsar, no Tsarina, no Tsarevich.’
‘How can you be so certain?’ Lily’s voice was scarcely audible as she at last made sense of the familiar features and the appalling answer struck her. ‘Who are you, Anna?’
With a wide gesture, the woman swept off her hat and ruffled her hair with a hand. Hair cut short as a boy’s. And not the black hair Lily was expecting. It gleamed and glinted like a cap of bronze around a lovely face in the morning sunshine. Dark eyes looked down at her with the bitter mischief of a Peter Pan.
‘I wish I knew! I have been so many people in the last five years I can’t be certain. I do know there is one man who will tell me who I am. But I’ll remember the manners I used once to have and introduce myself properly, shall I?’ The Russian tilted her head in an old-fashioned gesture of greeting. ‘You have the honour of addressing the Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of the House of Romanov. How do—’
In mid-sentence two rough hands caught Lily off guard. They encircled her wrists and jerked her forward on to a raised knee that knocked the breath from her body. She felt herself being pushed towards and rolled over the broad rim of the parapet as though she were no more substantial than a doll. Thrashing and scrabbling uselessly at the stonework, Lily was held dangling yards above the filthy water that swirled between the arches. One by one, her shoes fell and were sucked down into the whirlpool. Her feet tried for a toehold on the smooth stone facing and found none. Her only link with the world above was the capricious grip of a woman who hated her and all she stood for.
‘Nothing to say? Your eyes are begging to know why. Well, listen! It’s short. I won’t keep you in suspense.’ The jibe was accompanied by a burst of laughter which told Lily she could expect no mercy. ‘Your prince should have paid with his life for my brother: your king for my father: your queen for my mother. A modest demand; I would have been satisfied with three lives, though the debt is much greater. But you put yourself in my way. Poor, silly creature. They’ve abandoned you, your handlers. Had you guessed? A sacrificial sop! They’d be relieved if I worked through what they assume to be my murderous rage by killing
you.
They don’t care to leave witnesses of their bad behaviour lying about.’
She broke off, and with a disturbing change of mood directed a dazzling smile down into Lily’s terrified eyes. ‘But I’m not quite that unhinged. And besides, you’re lucky, Miss Wentworth. For the best of reasons – the
very
best of reasons – you catch me in a frame of mind which is neither suicidal nor murderous. I’m going to let you off with no more than a cold swim to teach you a lesson … you and your meddlesome handler Sandilands.’
She let go Lily’s left hand and enjoyed the squeal the abrupt imbalance jerked from her victim’s lips. She lunged over and grasped Lily’s right arm in a two-handed grip. Lily responded by reaching up and clamping her free left hand about her attacker’s wrist. When she dropped, she would at least take this mad girl with her.
‘If the master is impregnable, one can always thrash his horse. Believe me, this little punishment will annoy Sandilands almost as much as it annoys you. Take a deep breath! It’s quite possible, you say? To swim to the Savoy? Were you telling me the truth? Let’s see.’
Lily had heard the blast of a police whistle coming from the southern end of the bridge. A voice called out and the whistle blasted again. Nearer. A second later, a concerned voice called from the north end. This voice was close. Very close.
‘Hang on, miss! I’m coming. Hold tight!’
The girl above looked from one side to the other, assessing her situation. With interference approaching fast on each side and her victim like a limpet to her arm, the instinct for self-preservation that had served her so well came again to her aid. She made a swift decision. ‘Help! Suicide!’ she yelled. ‘She’s trying to jump! I can’t hold on to her any longer! Help me!’
A pounding of feet and two large male hands reached down and grabbed Lily firmly under the armpits. The Russian released her grip with a loud sigh. ‘Ouf! Thank you, sir. She
would
do it. Wouldn’t listen to
me
! Perhaps you could speak to her?’ And then: ‘Well, I never! You look like just the fellow to make her account for her sinful behaviour!’ Her whoop of amusement was completely spontaneous.
Lily was hauled upwards to the sound of a patter of applause and a few ragged hurrahs from a small crowd hurrying now from all sides to see the drama. She took in the sober black suit, homburg hat and ecclesiastical dog collar of her rescuer. She thought the face above the collar was the finest sight she had ever seen. He looked down at her in concern. Strong arms hoisted her over the parapet, carried her to a nearby bench and set her down. The clergyman sat down alongside, trapping her body against the side of the bench, and put round her shoulders a comforting yet restraining arm.
He launched with clerical confidence into a soothing address to the crowd. ‘Officer … everyone … no harm done, as you see. A touch of the hysterics but sound in wind and limb, I think we can say. But the mind? Ah, the mind! And the soul?’ He shook his handsome head in sorrow.
‘She’s lucky you were passing, Padré,’ someone commented.
‘Indeed! I thank God for the guidance He has given me. I
had
intended to take the Tube this morning. But now I shall need to have a quiet word with this poor young thing and explain to her the Almighty’s views on her impulse to self-destruction. Do feel free to stay and hear His words …’
An invitation guaranteed to start the crowd moving off. But the beat bobby knew his job. Suicide was more than a sin in the Metropolitan district – it was a crime. He advanced officiously on Lily, notebook in hand.
The vicar produced a small bible from his pocket. He took a card from it and passed it to the officer. At the sight of it, the custodian of law and order began energetically to move the remaining spectators on and then, after a certain amount of huffing and puffing and saluting, marched off himself, back down the bridge to the southern bank.
The crowd had gone, leaving Lily eyeing her saviour with suspicion. ‘Cor blimey, sir! In that suit and dog collar, you’re almost unrecognizable. If you were following me, why did it take you so long to step in?’
‘I
was
following you. You seemed to be on such good terms with our friend I thought I’d let you finish your conversation. And, at the
moment critique
, I was mobbed by a crowd of tourists wanting to know how to get to St Paul’s. Quite took me by surprise – you were there one second and gone the next! It’s some time since I did basic training in shadowing … I clearly need a refresher. Should have sent Fanshawe … No – perhaps not. I say – you didn’t really try to jump, did you?’
‘I was going to be her next victim. Murdering, vindictive cow!’
‘Mind your language, constable, and stop fussing. All’s well, isn’t it? I don’t think I see you swimming for shore exactly.’
‘You were never likely to. Sir, I can’t swim!’
The confession was the trigger. Lily could not suppress her body’s reaction any longer. She began to shake. After an injudicious exclamation of dismay, Joe tightened his hold on her and began to mutter encouraging formulae into her ear. Lily thought she heard: ‘Brace up! Worse things happen at sea. You’re quite all right, you know.’
‘You saw who she was?’ Lily mumbled when she could stop her teeth from rattling together.
He nodded. ‘Hard to believe what I saw. Red hair … face of an imp … Not the girl either of us was expecting. When you’ve calmed down, perhaps you’ll confirm my awful suspicions.’ He looked about him swiftly and murmured, ‘A corpse dancing? Did we conjure it up? We weren’t both hallucinating, I suppose?’