The Candle Man (10 page)

‘Perhaps, George, whether he has something or not is irrelevant. The fact is he suspects there’s
reason
to blackmail. That alone means I’d rather this low-life was at
the bottom of the Thames and crab-food as soon as possible,’ said Henry Rawlinson. His eyes twinkled beneath thick white brows and above drawn, liver-spotted cheeks. He stroked a bare chin
thoughtfully as the others nodded in silent agreement.

‘If the fellow even suspects there’s some rich pickings to be had, then he already knows far too much,’ said Rawlinson.

‘My concern, Henry, is that he does really have something.’ Warrington wondered if there was ever going to be a better time to tell them the worst of it. ‘He mentioned a
portrait . . . a small photographic portrait. A miniature.’

A spoon clattered noisily against fine china.

‘Good god!’ one of them gasped.

‘Warrington, are you serious?’

‘That’s what he claimed.’

‘Please tell us you mean a portrait of the woman alone.’

If only.

‘All of them, I’m afraid. “Very much the happy family.” Those were his words.’

The men sat in silence, contemplating that information. The old man, Rawlinson, stirred his tea gently. The three others in their little group – The Steering Committee, which was
Rawlinson’s euphemism – waited to see what Rawlinson had to say.

‘A photograph?’ He shook his head and tutted.

‘The stupid fool,’ muttered one of the others.

‘He’s still so young,’ said Rawlinson, ‘and so reckless.’

‘That’s no excuse. The young man has to be much smarter than this. After all, this girl, she was French, wasn’t she?’

‘And Catholic. An artist’s model, I believe.’

‘The man is a damned liability!’ growled one of them: Oscar Crosbourne. Warrington looked at the man as he agitatedly thumbed the stem of his pipe. Younger than Rawlinson, but still
one of this unofficial committee of silver-haired elders. ‘With these bloody problems we’re having in Ireland, the troubles the press are stoking up in the East End, grumblings of
revolution not only on foreign city streets, but right here in London! And the stupid young fool decides to get a foreign Catholic tart pregnant?! We’d be better off tossing
him
into
the Thames!’

There was a long silence. Warrington watched the old men sharing glances that spoke of age-old allegiances and hidden agendas, accepted protocols and boundaries of behaviour.

‘Let’s not have any more talk like that in here, Crosbourne. We’ve all sworn oaths, you understand? No more talk like that.’ Rawlinson turned his rheumy, old, grey eyes
onto Warrington. ‘Now, George, what are you suggesting?’

‘I would suggest we need to treat Tolly’s claim seriously.’

‘Do we know where to find him? Surely he could be paid a visit, his rooms searched for the item?’

‘He said he used some associates on this job. More than one. There is a danger that if something unpleasant was to happen to Tolly, then his associates might panic, might flee, might go to
ground . . . perhaps might even go to a newspaper with what they have, what they know.’

A log in the fire place spat a lump of glowing charcoal onto the tile hearth.

‘God help us!’ whispered Rawlinson, ‘if that happened.’

‘So, come on, George,’ said Crosbourne. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Much as I’m appalled that this little . . .’ He wanted to curse, but manners before his elders stayed him.

‘You can call him a little bastard if you want,’ said Rawlinson.

Warrington nodded. ‘This little
bastard
thinks he has us in a fix, and I would be inclined to let him believe this is so. Let him think he will have the money he’s asked for,
in due course.’

‘How much has he asked for?’

‘Two thousand pounds.’

‘Is that
all
?’ gasped one of the others. ‘Good lord, George, well
pay
the bloody man then and let’s have that picture back!’

‘But if we do, what’s to stop them asking for more? What’s to stop them taking our money, and then trying to get some more from a newspaper, for example?’

‘Of course, of course, George is quite right,’ said Rawlinson. ‘We don’t just need this item back – that is, if they really have it. We also need to be sure that
there is no one, other than those of us in this room, who know about the woman.’ He looked at them. ‘More importantly, the baby.’

They were silent for a while, watching the flames licking around the glowing ends of the last log in the grate.

‘Our mistake was assuming the woman had nothing left, nothing on her that was evidence of this . . . affair. And perhaps your error, George, was employing a local amateur.’

‘I used Tolly because, well, he’s expendable. That was the plan, gentlemen. This is what we agreed to. To make sure he did the job, then in turn was disposed of.’

Rawlinson reached out a hand and patted Warrington’s arm. ‘I understand why, George, but it has turned out to be a problem. An amateur has no reputation to preserve. An amateur is an
opportunist, someone who might decide he would like a little more money later on. Perhaps after he has spent all his swag, acquired a gambling debt, spent it all on alcohol or opium or whatever
that type spend their money on, perhaps an amateur like that would come knocking for more money.’

The old man settled back in his winged leather chair and tipped the last of the tepid cup of tea into his mouth. He smacked his lips thoughtfully.

‘I have an old friend in New York. He’s one of
us
.’ He nodded assurance. ‘They use a chap over there for problems such as this one. Bit of a bloodhound, I’ve
been told. Good nose for finding people, finding things. Very, very reliable.’

‘This man’s in America? It will take weeks to get him here.’ Oscar looked at the others. ‘We need this Tolly chap dead now! Before he gets impatient and—’

‘George, will he?’

Warrington stroked his jaw thoughtfully. ‘I left Tolly with the assurance that he will get his money. But that it was going to take me some time to get hold of it. I think he believes
that. To him, two thousand pounds is an unimaginable fortune. He’ll be patient. He’ll wait around for his money. For a little while yet, anyway.’ He looked at the others
pointedly. ‘Just as long as he isn’t spooked.’

Rawlinson nodded slowly. ‘I shall send a telegram to my friend, then. See if he can contact this fellow they use.’

A
rgyll looked on in admiration at the horse-drawn tram running on metal rails down the middle of the Strand. He shuffled in his wheelchair to watch
it go past.

‘You like the trams, John?’ said Mary.

He nodded. ‘They remind me of . . . something.’

‘Do they have trams like these in America?’ she asked, steering the chair around a fruit seller.

He rubbed his temple in a repeated circular motion, a habit she had noticed he’d developed over the last week, something he did when he was trying to coax something from his mind.

‘Yes . . . I think so.’

She wondered if that was an answer he had drawn from his memory, or just an assumption he was making. She knew he had produced some fleeting images of his life before. Last evening, as they
played cards again on his hospital bed, he was able to tell her he thought he lived in a big city once – tall buildings and busy streets. But it was not London he was seeing, he was almost
certain of that.

America. That’s where he was from, but no idea where in the country precisely. She knew nothing about the country. Nothing but the occasional things she’d seen in the penny papers:
terrifying-looking Indian warriors and continent-spanning railroads.

Last night, John, beginning now to try and piece the fragments of his life together, had asked her how they’d first met. She replied with one of her rehearsed answers, one she’d
practised several times over back in her lodgings, knowing the question was going to arise sooner or later.

‘Covent Garden,’ she’d said. She went on to describe how they’d bumped into each other quite by accident. He’d literally bowled her off her feet and had felt so
ashamed and apologetic, he’d offered to make amends by buying her tea.

He craned his neck to look up at her. ‘So do we live near here, Mary?’

‘Not too far. Our home is in a place called Holland Park.’

‘Is it a busy place, like this?’

‘No. Quiet and peaceful. Just what you and I both need, I fancy.’

His bandaged head bobbed with approval.

‘It’s a beautiful place. A tree-lined avenue with a row of lovely, tall houses.’

Mary smiled. She’d done it. She had gone and done it. She’d walked bold as brass into the letting agents and enquired about Number 67. There’d been an awful moment when
he’d looked up at her, and Mary had wondered whether a trace of the East End had been in her voice. Or that she might have swaggered in through the agency’s double doors instead of
gliding. But then he’d smiled warmly, and offered her a chair to sit in.

She had her ready-made story: her American cousin was convalescing in London after an unfortunate accident. They needed somewhere quiet for a few months, just the pair of them. The little park
in front of the tree-lined row of houses seemed absolutely perfect. Oh, and was it suitably furnished?

Ten minutes later, the gentlemen had his bowler hat on and keys jangling in his eager hands as he showed her around bedrooms and stairwells she was already very familiar with. She nodded
politely at his sales patter, laughed tolerantly at his gushing attempts to be humorous. And when he showed her the boiler in the basement and asked whether she would like to pay a little extra for
the property’s handyman to come in once a day to keep an eye on the coal burner, she declined.

‘My father taught me how to run a steam tractor. I can manage a domestic boiler quite adequately.’

The deal was done, money exchanged, and her name – Mrs Argyll – tidily written on a rental contract by the end of the morning.

She slowly pushed his wheelchair along Oxford Street, past Marble Arch, on to Bayswater Road, and finally through to Hyde Park, where they stopped for tea and watched a brass band playing on the
band stand and children chasing pigeons across freshly clipped lawns.

His eyes . . . John had eyes with well-defined crow’s feet – a mature man’s eyes. She could imagine them squinting back prairie sunlight from beneath the brim of a felt hat,
counting heads of cattle. Or gazing out upon factory floors full of noisy machines and a thousand immigrant workers. Eyes of an intelligent man. Now, though, they lit up with childlike innocence
and pleasure as the pigeons scattered, circled and swooped down behind their tormentors to resume pecking at seeds and breadcrumbs on the ground.

Mary realised, as she quietly studied his face, how far she had become immersed in this little fiction of hers. It had all started out as an impulsive gamble to see whether a dying man
she’d callously robbed was alive or dead. Now . . . ? Now she was taking on the care of a total stranger. A boy-like man she knew absolutely nothing about. She smiled at John’s
little-boy delight at the fluttering of pigeons, at the toy sailing boats bobbing on the duck pond. She realised that although she had to be about half his age, in a funny way it was as if
she’d become his mother.

Oh my . . . what am I doing?

Something one of the other street girls she knew often said:
In for a penny, in for a pound
.

As midday passed and the morning’s sun ducked behind scudding grey clouds, she decided that it was time to take John home. To their new home.

Home
. No longer that horrid room back in Whitechapel, that piss-stinking sparse room with damp patches on the low tobacco-browned ceiling, those walls with peeling paper and mottled black
spots of mould, but a proud three-storey townhouse with a servants’ floor at the very top.

Mary, do you really know what you’re doing, girl?

As the afternoon greyed and became chilly, they passed along Bayswater and through Notting Hill, thick with market stalls and the pungent aroma of fishmongers, and finally off the busy
thoroughfare of Holland Park Avenue and on to the quiet, leafy cul-de-sac that Mary had been returning to for the last couple of nights, preparing for John’s homecoming: removing the various
family portraits of the Frampton-Parkers, photographs, paintings and silhouettes.

‘Is this our home?’ asked Argyll.

‘It is.’

He smiled up at her. ‘It’s very nice.’

‘Come on then,’ she said brightly. ‘Let’s get you inside and then I’ll make us some supper.’

Argyll lifted himself out of the wheelchair and shuffled his left leg forward, taking the first of the half dozen steps up to the front door beneath the portico. Mary followed, reversing the
chair up each step. At the top, she unlocked the front door.

‘Home, my dear,’ she said as it swung in, revealing old oak floorboards and a dark maroon hallway.

She helped him step over the threshold and onto a mat inside. ‘I’ll get a fire going in the front room,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll go and get us something from the
grocer’s around the corner.’