The Candle Man (32 page)

‘Bloody hell!’ he growled, pushing his way forward through people who scowled at him and remarked at his rudeness. But he was too slow. The tram was already too far ahead for him to
try and attempt to catch it up on foot.

He looked around desperately for a hansom. But this being the Strand, every damned cab he could see in either direction already had passengers aboard.

‘Argh, shit n’ fuckin’ bollocks!’

Liz shouldered her way inside the tram, but not so far inside she’d struggle to do a runner if the conductor clocked her for a fare. She hung on to a handrail. Like
everyone else shoe-horned on, she was oblivious to the people bumping against her, lost in her own world of thoughts.

What am I doing? Cath’s right. This is crazy!

She had told Cath only part of it. It was all there in that letter, that confession. All there and almost too much for her to untangle and make sense of with one quick read. The man who’d
been living in room 207 – what name had he signed at the bottom? Babber? No, Babbitt, that was it – he was some sort of hired murderer. And he confessed he was the one who’d done
the Hanbury Street and Bucks Row murders: Nichols and Chapman.

The organ in the jar was a part of the Chapman woman. His proof that he was not just another hoaxer having fun with the police. But then the confession got complicated. She wondered whether
she’d misread the letter or misinterpreted what had been put down on those pages. The man – Babbitt – was confessing he’d been hired by a group of gentlemen who belonged to
the Freemasons.

Liz, like most people, had heard of the Masons but knew very little about them. Posh gents who met in clubs, sometimes donated money to workhouses, some would say. Others? That they danced naked
around virgins and conducted all sorts of dark magic in their mysterious halls.

But this group of gentlemen seemed to have a particular responsibility, a particular purpose. When she’d opened the envelope, she had given the scuffed photograph scant attention. Glanced
at it and no more. A man, a woman and a baby. But, having read further . . .

Prince Albert? Really?

She tried to recall the grey image. The man with his head held up and a cocky twist to his lips beneath the meagre twirl of a thin moustache. He certainly looked like he could be royalty. There
was an inbred swagger in that pose. But in truth, the only royal face she’d know anywhere was Queen Victoria’s. From the few paper illustrations she’d seen of him over the years,
she thought young Prince ‘Eddy’ had looked wholly unremarkable. It could’ve been him in that photograph picture. On the other hand, it could’ve been any fashionable young
fop.

But then someone proper knowledgeable would be able to tell, wouldn’t they?

A new thought sent a shiver of comprehension down her back, as if a fellow passenger had gently lifted the collar of her coat away from her neck and lightly blown inside it.

The Queen’s son fucking a whore? Producing a bastard with her? It didn’t take a lot of brainwork to figure out there’d be merry hell to pay if that kind of story ever made it
into the news stands. The sort of merry hell that would put mobs on the streets.

Liz listened to men do their talking over an ale. While there was an affection for ‘dear ol’ Victoria’ – that came as a caveat before ever discussing the royals –
there was little love for the rest of them ‘Bavarian scroungers’. Least of all the privileged and pampered Eddy, who seemed to be making it his life’s mission to thumb his nose at
every hard-working man with coal dust, nicks-n-cuts and calluses on his hands. Liz had even heard men muttering scary words like ‘revolution’ into the froth of their beer.

Mr Babbitt had been hired to kill all those who knew about Eddy’s carelessness. And now, so this Babbitt appeared to be claiming, these same Mason gentlemen working hard to safeguard
Eddy’s reputation wanted to be absolutely certain that their hired killer, their ‘Ripper’, was going to be entirely silent on the matter.

Oh, god ’elp me. And now I know . . .

She felt her legs waver beneath her. For a moment, it was nothing but the swaying press of fellow passengers that was holding her on her feet. Her friend Cath knew none of this, only the few
sentences she’d blurted out loud in the room; that Mary was sharing rooms with the killer of those two women – Jack the Ripper.

And Mary clearly hadn’t the first clue about any of this.

Instinct told her to ring the tram’s bell and jump off, to head the other way. To walk away from this right now. Not just this Ripper to fear. God help her, it was powerful men, too. She
should get off, walk away. Get out of London. Disappear into some faraway country retreat and never speak to another soul as long as she lived. But then she wondered what it would do to her if she
was to read in tomorrow’s paper of a young woman by the name of Mary Kelly found in some yard with her throat sliced back to her spine and her innards pulled out and scattered about the
place. And all she’d needed to do to save her was knock on the door and scream to Mary to get out now!

Just knockin’ for ’er, that’s all I’m doing. Ain’t goin’ inside, that’s for sure.

N
ow, here’s the thing, Mary . . . it’s going to happen, sooner or later
. She realised there was going to come a moment when she
said something to John that was a complete contradiction to some earlier lie she’d told him. She imagined he would be polite about it, ponder on it awhile, before calmly asking her to resolve
the contradiction. Oh yes, he would be awfully polite about it, not angry, but that was not the point. The point was, too much of that and he would finally figure out that she had been telling him
lies and her game would be up. The trust he offered her without question would be gone.

She watched a little boy chasing pigeons around the bandstand in the small park. Fat hands and chubby pink legs tormenting the pigeons eager and impatient to touch down and peck at bread crumbs
someone had thrown on the ground.

She wondered if John had actually been curious enough to try the cellar door. No . . . he wouldn’t, though. That was the thing; she was getting used to his little ways. He never seemed to
be particularly curious; happy to take the face value of everything she told him. She’d explained it was just dusty bags of coke down there. Dirty, dark and plenty of nasty creepy crawlies.
If he really wanted to go take a look, she’d take him down and show him. All the same, she wished she’d pocketed the key instead of sliding it back under the clock’s stand like
she had. Almost certain he hadn’t seen her doing that. Almost certain.

She bit her lip.

Should have taken the key.

It was playing on her mind now.

Maybe if he did find the key, he’d unlock the door, open it, and stare down at the steps leading into the blackness. But that’s all he’d do. Like a child, he hated the dark.
Whether that was a fear remembered from before or whether it was all part of the damage to his mind, there was no way to know. But she was almost certain he wouldn’t venture down there on his
own. Still . . .

Should have taken the key.

Her thoughts drifted onto the other key; a far more important one. The one she hoped was going to tell her – for good or bad – more about who he is.

Who he was, Mary
, she corrected herself.
Who he was.

Liz said she’d come by some time in the next couple of days with any news she had. Mary was half-hoping that Liz would not turn up. That she’d just taken the money and tossed away
the key, laughing at Mary’s gullibility behind her back. At least there’d be no bad news. No definite end to her little fairytale.

‘I’m sorry, Mary, love. It’s like this: his family was up there in that room. Wife an’ kids an’ all. They asked me ’ow I got ’old of this key.
I’m sorry, Mary . . . I ’ad to tell ’em straight; they got coppers out on the beat lookin’ for ’im. They been puttin’ missin’ person notices in all the
papers. Game’s up, girl; best you let ’im go. I told ’em you been treatin’ him well, carin’ for him like a nurse. But they’re goin’ to be comin’ to
get ’im any time now. Might be best if you make a quick exit, love.’

That’s how it was going to end, wasn’t it? Maybe the smart thing to do would be to go back home right now, go straight down into the cellar, grab that bag of money, and leave
sharpish, just like she should have done at the very beginning.

Oh, god . . . but the thought of doing that to him. He’d be standing there looking at her, vexed, with puppy dog eyes that asked what he’d done to upset her, wanting to know when she
would be back.

‘I can’t do that,’ she muttered.

But maintaining this fiction: it wasn’t going to last forever. At some point, he was going to catch her out, or some memory would surface that completely, unambiguously, contradicted all
that she’d told him. And running off with his money? Leaving him all alone? She couldn’t bring herself to do that either.

That leaves telling him the truth.
The thought of doing that terrified her. However, it would be far better she sat him down and told him all she knew, than him one day soon catching her
out. At least then, with her being honest with him like that, he might still trust her in some small way. There might still be a thread of trust left; just enough for them to start over with. To
start from scratch and perhaps, perhaps, find their way back to where they’d been last night.

Always was going to be this way anyway, wasn’t it? Having to tell him.

She got up off the park bench, her arm looped through the handle of her wicker shopping basket. Things to do: a shirt to pick up from the launderette, some groceries to get.

Tonight. Tonight, over a nice supper, she decided she was going to tell him everything and hope that when she was done, he still wanted her. Then perhaps there was still a chance of that
fairytale ending.

W
arrington curled his lip in disgust at the squalor of the lodging house. Its dark entrance hallway and stairwell reeked of stale piss, and more.
He turned to look at Orman, who met his gaze with a likewise wrinkled nose.

‘Me room’s up along ’ere,’ said the tart. They had her name now: Catherine Eddowes. She fumbled in a tatty bag and finally her keys, which jangled in her shaking hands.
She jammed it in the lock and opened the door to her room.

The noise she was making caused someone to stir inside a room further up the dimly lit hallway. A door was wrenched open and a small woman in a shawl stepped out into the hall. She was followed
by the faintest odour of cooking opium.

‘That you, Mary! Where the pissin’ ’ell’s my money?!’

‘It’s me, Marge; it’s Cath!’

‘Fuck!’ She spat the word out like it was a fly flown into her mouth. ‘So where’s yer fuckin’ mate? This ain’t a fuckin’ charity shop. She owes
me—’

‘Marge,’ Cath cautioned. ‘We got visitors.’

The woman scowled down at the dark end of the hall, just inside the closed front door. ‘You workin’
already
?’ She sounded impressed.

‘No, it’s the police.’

Marge’s challenging stance and tone vanished in an instant. ‘Oh, good morning, genty-men!’ she smiled, a mouth of gums and black teeth. ‘Can I ’elp you two loves
with anythin’?’

‘It’s good
afternoon
now,’ said Warrington dryly. ‘And no. We’re here to talk with Catherine.’

Marge shook her head and tutted. ‘Oh, yer bloody silly cow! Whatcha fuckin’ gone an’ done now?’

‘It’s about that Jack the—’

Warrington cut her off. ‘It’s actually none of your business,
love
.’ Warrington gestured at her door, leaking the faintest twist of pipe smoke into the hallway.
‘Why don’t you go back inside before I send my inspector in there to turn over your rooms?’

Her head disappeared and the door slammed shut behind her. Warrington hesitated a moment, wondering whether the woman might now be a potential problem to clear up later. Just the two words
she’d heard: ’Jack the—’. But quite possibly two words too many.