The Darkest Walk of Crime (26 page)

Blackbirds eased them into the
night, and fresh rain softly caressed the windows as the fire gradually faded.
Mendick sat on the only chair, occasionally putting out his hand but always
withdrawing it before he made contact with Jennifer’s tormented body. When the
candle burned low he lit another, unwilling to leave her in the dark.

When Jennifer finally looked up,
her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. She swallowed hard, but when she spoke
her voice was very controlled. “Can you remember when I asked you what was
missing in my . . . the house in Manchester?”

“I remember,” Mendick said
quietly. In the confusion of trying to escape from the Chartists he had not
given the question any more thought.

“So, James, what was missing?”
Jennifer seemed to be biting back the words.

“Your husband? Mr Ogden?” he
hazarded, and saw the anger flare again, uncontrollable and frantic.

“Not Ogden! Not ever Ogden! What
else? What should there be after ten years of marriage?” She nearly screamed
the words, heedless of being overheard.

“Children, of course! Children!
I have none, can’t you see that?”

Mendick backed off from her
fury. This was not the demure domestic woman that he had first met, but a
spitfire full of bile and bitterness.

“I had not thought . . .”

“Of course you had not thought.”
Jennifer took a deep, shuddering breath. “But try to think now, James. I cannot
have children, James. What do you think of that?”

He remembered Emma carrying
their child, he remembered her pride and beauty, the way she swelled and the
way she suffered.

“My wife died in childbirth,” he
said quietly, controlling his own emotion. “If she had been unable to have
children, she would still be with me.”

Deep in her own grief, Jennifer
brushed aside his experience. “You say that
now,
but what would you have
said then? I saw the look in your face just now; you despised me.”

“Despised you?”

Mendick had been married long
enough to realise that he could not console a woman in such a frame of mind.
Jennifer was looking for a quarrel and would twist whatever he said. She had
been hurt and wanted to hurt somebody else, and he was the most available
person. Yet he knew that she was also at her most vulnerable, scared, newly
alone in the world, so he must ensure he did not distress her further.

 “No, Jennifer, I do not despise
you.” He braced himself for the inevitable onslaught, but instead she sighed.

“No? You would if you were my
husband. You would if you wanted sons to follow you.”

Suddenly he thought he
understood. Jennifer had nothing of Ogden, no child to carry his memory, and
she believed that Ogden would have been disappointed.

“Nathaniel married you,
Jennifer, for yourself. As soon as I saw you together, I knew that you were
happy. He would not mind; he would understand.”

“Would he?” Jennifer raised her
eyebrows in a display of such scepticism that Mendick knew he was wrong again.
“Would he indeed?” She stood up, still brandishing the hatpin. “No, he would
not. He wanted children, Mr Mendick, and I failed him. I was infertile and
produced no heirs.” She slapped at her crotch, deliberately obscene. “This is
useless; I am useless, and he hated me for it.”

“No,” he tried to console her,
“I’m sure he did not.”

“You’re sure of an awful lot, Mr
Mendick, and all your sureties are incorrect. He hated me for it, and . . .”
she paused, shaking her head as her face collapsed, her mouth open in howls.

Once again he took a single step
forward but stopped. He could only watch and wait for Jennifer to regain her
composure. By the time she recovered, the bed was a rumpled mess and her face
was blotchy and swollen.

“He beat me, Mr Mendick, that’s
how much he understood. He beat me, and that’s how
happy
we were
together.”

“Oh sweet Lord.” Mendick sat on
the bed. “I had no idea.”

“No,” Jennifer said quietly,
‘you had no idea. You saw him as a good man because even
Scotland Yard
knew
that. You saw Ogden’s public face, the smiling, dedicated police officer who
always did his duty, the man with the docile wife and the respectable
occupation. I saw the
real
Nathaniel Ogden, the ranting failure who
married a woman who couldn't even produce a child. I saw . . .” she shook her
head. “I saw a different man, Mr Mendick, and I do not care that he is dead.”
She looked up through eyes liquid with tears. “Now do you despise me? A woman
who can't produce children and a wife who doesn't care that her husband is
dead?”

“He beat you?”

Mendick tried to equate his
vision of the cheerful Sergeant Ogden with a man who beat his wife. He had
encountered other such men, one or two of whom he had arrested, but they were
usually drunken brutes who took out their frustrations on the most vulnerable
person they could find; he had not thought of Ogden as a failure, a drunkard or
a brute. He glanced at Jennifer, searching for some residual evidence, a fading
bruise, perhaps, or a swollen lip. She read his look with ease.

“He hit me where it would never
show,” Jennifer confirmed. “Where only he would ever see it, if you
understand?” She passed a quivering finger over her body.

“I think I do.” Mendick felt his
lip curling. “My God, but I’m sorry, Mrs Ogden . . .”

“Jennifer. Call me Jennifer.”
Her voice had risen to a hysterical scream. “Never use that name again. I do
not want that name!”

“I am sorry, Jennifer. But could
you not leave? Go somewhere else?”

“Where would you have me go?”
She spread her arms to indicate her helplessness. “A woman apart from her
husband has few rights, James. You know that. As you know that the law allows a
man to discipline his wife; he was breaking no law.”

“Indeed he was,” Mendick said
quickly. “He was breaking the law, and could have been jailed for what he did.”

“But he told me . . .”

“Lies. He told you lies.”

“But he was a policeman, and he
said it was legal . . .” Jennifer looked up, her face twisted and tear-stained,
horrified at this new example of her husband’s cruelty.

“It is not legal to hit your
wife,” Mendick assured her gently. He wanted to hold her but knew that she
would not accept his sympathy, nor his embrace, however kindly meant.

“Oh God.” She ducked her head,
her voice quavering, “It’s too late now. He’s gone, and you’re taking me to London
to start a new life where nobody knows me.”

Mendick nodded. “That’s the
sensible thing to do.” He tried to sound calm and reasonable, but he felt like
shouting at the terrible injustice of life. “We’ll drive down to London
together, tell Scotland Yard all we know, and then you can build a better life
for yourself.”

“I won’t be telling Scotland
Yard anything,” Jennifer told him. Her smile was bitter. “Do you really think I
care
if the Chartists take over the country?”

“Probably not,” Mendick said,
“but whether they succeed or not, their attempt will bring misery to thousands
of people just like you.”

Jennifer looked at him, her eyes
narrow. “Then let them suffer!” She spat out the words. “Where were they when I
needed help?” She glared at him, conveying her hurt through wild eyes, until
she began to cry again, this time with great, heaving sobs that left her
drained and exhausted.

Mendick said nothing, sharing
her hurt. He had seen many emotional women in the police cells, the only
difference was that he had not cared a button for any of them, and he was
beginning to care for Jennifer. He waited for her to calm down.

“I have no intention of talking
with Inspector Field or any other inspector. I only want to get as far from Manchester
as possible, and you provided me with the means.” Jennifer looked up again. “So
now
do you despise me? Now are you going to hit me?”

Mendick shook his head. “No,” he
said quietly, “and when you have stopped trying to make me dislike you, we can
speak again. Until then, I think you had better get some rest, we have another
long day tomorrow.” He hesitated for a moment. “I will sleep with most of my
clothes on, but if you feel more comfortable, you can remove some or all of
yours. I promise to respect your privacy.”

He looked directly into her
eyes, seeing the pain behind the defiance, the fear underlying the aggression.
“I told you before that you have nothing to fear from me, Jennifer, and I repeat
that statement.” He lowered his voice and spoke very slowly, “You have nothing
to fear from me, Jennifer, now or in the future. What your husband did was
terrible, and I sympathise with you, but I have no reason to despise you.”

When he awoke, Jennifer was
lying under the top cover, with her hatpin clutched firmly in her hand. She was
still sobbing, but he could do nothing to ease her pain. He listened to her for
some time, and only when she stopped did he gently remove the pin from her fist
in case she rolled onto it and injured herself. She did not stir, so he
rearranged the covers to make her more comfortable and looked down on her lying
there.

“Sleep tight,” he said quietly,
and for a moment he saw Emma watching from the corner of his mind.

*

“It’s over two hundred miles
between Manchester and London,” Mendick said as he cracked his whip. “And it
might be best to avoid the main roads, so settle down for a long ride.”

The horse jolted forward, its
hooves kicking up gravel from the drive as he left the inn and steered onto the
road. The coach lights glinted in the darkness of pre-dawn, flickering over the
roadside trees and occasionally reflecting the yellow eyes of watchful sheep.
Looking further afield, he saw pinpricks of light where the inhabitants of
lonely cottages were wakening.

“We have travelled about forty
miles, so by my reckoning we have two or even three more days of travel ahead
of us.”

Jennifer nodded. Puffy-eyed from
lack of sleep, she had insisted on joining him on the driving step that morning.
Saying nothing, she sat at his side, wrapped up in her coat and with a thick
coach blanket on top. Only when the brougham jolted over a series of deep ruts,
spraying mud on either side of the road did she break her silence, and then to
speak very softly.

“He hated me, James,” she said
quietly. “He hated me for failing to give him a son, and he proved it by making
me feel worthless in every way.” She looked away again, fighting her tears.
“Everything I did, he mocked; everything I said was wrong. ‘You’re useless,
Jennifer,’ he said. ‘You can’t make a child and you can’t do anything. You’re
useless.’”

“Aye?” Mendick guided the horse
around a bend, with the lanterns only a meagre guide in the darkness and the
horse’s hooves slipping on mud. “Well, we both know he was wrong, then.”

“I have to
prove
him
wrong, James; I have to prove that I am not useless.”

Although she used his name,
Mendick knew that she was speaking to herself, justifying her actions,
assuaging her guilt for leaving her home.

“He failed to stop the
Chartists, James, so I must succeed.” She looked at him, her face strained. “So
maybe I will speak to your Inspector Field after all.”

“That could be helpful,” Mendick
said quietly. “And as you have come to that decision, I think it is time to put
things right between us.”

“There’s nothing to put right,”
Jennifer said, suddenly guarded again, as if suspecting he would demand some
piece of what remained of her fragile self-respect. “And there is no
us
.
We are travelling together; I have the money, and you drive the carriage. When
we reach London, we do what we have to do and part, never to see each other
again.”

“Agreed,” Mendick said. “But
until then? Are we going to sit at rigid attention, with you mistrusting
everything I say and do and with me expecting you to plunge that great dagger
of a hatpin into me at any second?” Mendick tried to smile, but Jennifer looked
away.

“Do you blame me?” Her voice was
sharp again. “If my own husband hated me, why should you be any different?”

“I have no reason to hate you.
Indeed, I have every reason
not
to; you helped me when I needed help,
and when you did not have to.”

Jennifer said nothing but stared
into the surrounding blackness. Somewhere far away there was an orange glow
from a factory fire, its light a focal point for her attention. An owl
screeched hauntingly, quickly echoed by its mate, and Jennifer shivered on the
seat.

Mendick pressed home what he
thought might be his advantage. “And no, I do not blame you, but I think you
blame yourself.”

Jennifer stiffened at once. “My
life is nothing to do with you, and I would thank you not to pry.”

Sighing, Mendick laid the whip
across the flank of the horse so it bucked forward, jerking the brougham behind
it.

“And there’s no need to take out
your black temper on the horse, Mr Mendick!”

He cracked the whip again,
hunched into Ogden’s coat and glared gloomily ahead. Here he was, driving down
the length of England in a stolen coach, with the future of the nation in his
hands, and rather than plan for the best way to deliver his message, he was
arguing with an embittered widow.

“We’ll have to hurry,” he
explained needlessly. “The Chartists’ meeting is planned for the twelfth of
next month.”

“That’s two weeks away yet.”
Jennifer’s reminder was sharp.

“It’s not much time to organise
defence against the Chartist hordes.”

“Hordes!” Her tone was scathing.
“Hordes of unemployed men who only want a decent wage for their families and
some sort of representation in the running of the country.” The coach slammed
into a hole in the road, jostling Jennifer against him, but she quickly pushed
herself away. “Not the most dangerous enemy for the government, I would think.”