Cat and Mouse (49 page)

Sarah sighed. ‘I don't know, Debbie. Somehow I doubt it, he's not that sort of man. But, to tell you the truth, at this moment I don't really care!’

On the way across town Martin Armstrong thought: if I can do the same here, I'll be safe. This is the only other place Sarah Becket knows about. If I can get all the girls out of here, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police himself will be able to walk around this house and won't be able to prove anything!

It was rush hour, though, the end of the working day. Martin's motor taxi was blocked in a series of jams caused by motor omnibuses, horse-drawn drays, other taxis, trams, hansom cabs, cars, motor lorries, and even coster boys pushing barrows. The pavements were thronged with clerks, businessmen, and shoppers returning home. At one point a shire horse, pulling an omnibus in front of Martin's taxi, got its loose shoe jammed in the tram rails. The animal panicked, wrenched itself free of its traces, snapped the four-inch thick shaft of the omnibus, and kicked in the spokes of the wheel of a brewer's dray, which collapsed sideways, spilling barrels of beer all over the road. When the ensuing chaos and argument had lasted over half an hour, Martin paid off his taxi driver and got out to walk. But that proved a further mistake because he was not a fit man, and after a few hundred yards he was out of breath and his chest hurt. He did not find a free cab capable of moving through the streets until half past six, and it was nearly eight when it set him down outside the house in Red Lion Street.

The argument here was calmer, but not dissimilar to that which he'd had with Mrs Burgoyne. The madam, Mrs Stone, saw no reason why she should move immediately, and she had nowhere obvious to go. If Martin would pay to put herself and the girls up in a hotel or a boarding house for a week, she might consider it, she said. Otherwise, no. Anyway, there were customers in the house at the moment and others who had made appointments. She couldn't close down just like that! She was a businesswoman, she had a reputation to keep up. Surely a man like Martin, with connections in high places, could head off any unpleasant investigation that might take place?

Anyway, everyone knew that suffragettes were mad. No one in authority would take what they said seriously for a moment.

The conversation was interrupted by a scream from upstairs.

‘Mrs Stone! Mrs Stone! Look out the window, quick! There's a terrible huge crowd outside, all pointing here!’

Martin felt the same shock to his heart that he had felt earlier that day when he had discovered Sarah Becket was missing. He swayed, clutched the back of a chair, and breathed deeply until the pain in his chest lessened and his pulse slowed. He walked to the window beside the front door, sweat prickling his forehead.

Outside in the street was an awesome sight. Thirty or forty women, all dressed in white, stood close together under the streetlights, holding placards and chanting. Martin read some of the placards.

End Child Prostitution

Close this Whorehouse.

Chastity for Men!

Stop Veneral Disease — End the Great Scourge!

Votes for Women!

Round the outside of the group of suffragettes was a crowd of onlookers. Some — a group of young shop assistants and delivery boys in flat caps and scruffy suits — were enjoying themselves throwing fruit and tomatoes, several of which had splashed on the suffragettes' white dresses. For a moment Martin cheered them silently, hoping they would drive the women away.

Then a delegation of women approached the front door. They were led by an elderly, determined looking woman with grey hair swept back severely into a bun under a small blue hat, and round spectacles on her nose. Behind her came four others. Three were in white dresses carrying banners; the fourth was a tall young woman in a plain brown dress whom Martin had seen before somewhere.

The wardress! Ruth Harkness.

Hurriedly, Mrs Stone locked the door and Martin stepped back from the window and turned down the light so that he could see and not be seen. The women outside hammered on the knocker. To his disgust, Martin saw that there were a number of shabbily-dressed young men behind them, earnestly scribbling into their notebooks.

The doorknob rattled. When the women outside found that the door was locked, one of them called out.

‘Open this door, please! We represent the Women's Social and Political Union. We are campaigning for the purity of relations between the sexes, and we believe this to be a brothel which is responsible for the spread of venereal disease and the deliberate corruption of young children! We want to speak to the landlord, Dr Martin Armstrong.’

Martin groaned. He saw the young reporters scribbling frantically in their notebooks. Girls were milling around on the stairs behind him and two flustered middle-aged men came downstairs, hurriedly buttoning their waistcoats.

‘What the devil is it, Mrs Stone?’ one of the men asked. ‘What's going on?’

Mrs Stone gestured helplessly towards the door. ‘Bloody suffragettes! Blasted health and purity campaign, looks like! Caught you with your trousers down, haven't they?’ Despite her annoyance, she couldn't resist a smile.

The man looked furious, pompous, and terrified all at once. ‘I can't be found here, woman! I've got a family, a home, a reputation to keep up! Is there a back way out?’

Mrs Stone laughed. ‘Yes, if you have to. Out through the yard by the dustbins. Show him, Jane, will you?’

As the two men hurried out, Martin looked about him irresolutely. Should he stay? After all, the suffragettes couldn't get in, unless . . .

There was a crash of breaking glass. The window next to the front door smashed and a stone rolled on the floor.

‘Bloody hell!’

‘Look out!’

‘Stand back, there!’

‘Open this door!’

‘No!’

More windows smashed. Martin ducked out of the hall into one of the downstairs front rooms, but stones were coming in there as well. Two, three, six — there was shattered glass everywhere, all over the chairs and carpet. Shouts and cheers from outside, screams and yells from upstairs. He could see the stones going up to the first floor too.

Then the keen, piercing sound of a policeman's whistle.

I can't stay here, Martin thought. The police will come in and interview anyone who's here — I've got to get away. Whatever happens, this is ruin. Where shall I go?

He ran out through the kitchen and the scullery, into the back yard, past the dustbins and the outside loo. On down the filthy alleyway, panting, his heavy body unused to exercise. At least there were no women here — they had not thought to guard the back entrance. The shouts and screams were fading now. It was a long alley — at the end he could see a pool of light cast by a gas lamp where the alley emerged into the main street. Martin's chest hurt and his forehead was sweating. As he came near the end of the alley he slowed to a walk, breathing deeply, painfully.

Where now? he thought. Away from here. Home, to hide and plan and think. What good will that do? The scandal will be all over the press in the morning. What shall I say? The police are bound to go into that house now, even if they do arrest the suffragettes for breaking the windows. At least I wasn't there. If Mrs Stone lies convincingly they may not be able to prove any connection at first.

Oh my God!

He had forgotten his briefcase. It was there on the floor in Mrs Stone's front room with all the accounts and photographs he had saved from the house in Kensington. And it was engraved with his name and address.

He dithered halfway along the alleyway. I shall have to go back and get it. No I can't — the police may be in there now and the suffragettes, too, for all I know. I hope they get arrested and their skulls split open by truncheons —
but what am I going to do?

It's no good, I'll have to run.

He lumbered out into the street and almost bumped into two policemen. He turned to get away from them but one of them seized his shoulder.

‘Just a minute, matey!’

‘What are you doing? I . . .’

He turned, trying to be indignant, but, as he did so, the policeman shoved his right arm up his back, painfully, and the other bent to peer into his eyes.

‘Yeah, this is one of 'em all right, Bill. Dashing out the back way to save 'is skin. You can see the guilt in his face!’

‘But I . . .’

‘Come on, sunshine. Save it for the Inspector at the station. You can make all your excuses there.’

Martin would have protested vehemently, but the pain of the arm twisted up his back was too intense. And then, as he thought of the briefcase he had left in the house another pain came sharp and fierce into his chest. He was gripped by a fierce cramp so that he couldn't breathe, and the harder he tried, the worse it became, so that he could feel his face turning blue and his tongue hanging out and then he flopped in the man's arms and fell face down in a puddle in the gutter, hunched over into a ball and twitching in agony as though with some huge effort his body might get his heart going again.

The two policemen bent over him, shocked, uncertain what to do.

‘Blimey, George,’ one of them muttered, awestruck. ‘I think we frightened the bugger to death!’

Deborah had booked tickets on the night train to Holyhead which left at ten o'clock. She knew it would be a strain for Sarah but she thought it offered the greatest chance of concealment. Once they were on board and in their sleeping compartment they could go to bed, and no one would disturb them until morning. If they had travelled by day they would have had to sit in a compartment with others, or go into the restaurant car, and in either place there might have been someone who would recognise Sarah, or simply comment on her unusually strained, starved appearance.

The difficulty was getting her to the station in the first place.

It was only a few hundred yards from the hotel, so they could easily have walked. But Sarah was in such a state of emotional and physical collapse after Jonathan had left that Deborah decided to ask Mrs Stewart to order a cab. At half past nine they sat in the front of the hotel downstairs, waiting for it.

Sarah wore a long black fur-lined coat which covered her body completely from head to foot, so no one would see how thin she was. It kept her warm, too — even indoors with coal fires Deborah had seen her shiver, and it was a cold night outside, windy with the threat of rain. She wore a small, veiled black hat, fastened under her chin with a ribbon as though she were a widow in mourning.

Deborah looked the cheerful one, with a pale blue coat and a feather in her hat with her hair up, but she was not. The scene with Jonathan had depressed her more than she had expected, and the cold dark night outside the window frightened her with its loneliness. She kept thinking of Rankin, walking away from her with his hands in his pockets under the streetlight on the embankment. Perhaps, if I go out now, he will be waiting at the station to see me off, she thought, and knew it was nonsense.

I am leaving London, I shall not see him ever again.

Only in my baby's eyes . . .

But at least now she had something to do, someone to care for. Sarah sat silent, reaching her hands out to the fire. She seemed to luxuriate in the warmth of the flames, as though she had never seen such a thing before. If she collapses on this journey it will be my fault, Deborah thought. We could have stayed another day . . .

‘There it is!’

She saw the cab draw up outside and went out to the hall to show the cabbie which bags to take. Then she took Sarah's arm as they went outside, but Sarah climbed in without trouble.

‘I'm not an invalid, you know,’ she said. ‘I could have walked.’

‘I'm sure you could. But it's not necessary. Anyway, look!’

Outside the station were two large policemen, patrolling quietly up and down. Are they looking for us, or are they always there, Deborah wondered. She had never sheltered an escaped prisoner before, she had never thought to look. But coincidence or not, she was glad to drive past them in safety. It's going to be like this all the way to Ireland, she realised.

Mrs Stewart had collected their tickets earlier that afternoon, so they only had to find a porter to carry their bags, and get on the train. When they were safely settled in their sleeping compartment, Sarah sat down quietly in the single armchair while Deborah unpacked their bags and brought out the nightdress and dressing gown she had brought for Sarah from Belgrave Square. Sarah watched her, smiling sadly.

‘You're an angel, you know,’ she said. ‘To take all this trouble for me. I don't deserve it.’

‘You never deserved to fall off your pony or slip on the ice when we were young, either,’ Deborah answered. ‘But I was there to help you home and bandage you all the same. I think I enjoyed it, at the time. Probably I just wanted to be loved.’

Sarah seized her sister's arm, and stared intently into her face. ‘Don't mock yourself, Debbie,’ she said intensely. ‘You were here when I really needed you. That's not something to despise. I'm truly grateful. I hope I'll be able to repay it some day.’

Deborah looked away.

‘None of us knows what's going to happen in life, do we? Come on, let me help you out of that dress.’

Sarah stood up and turned her back so that Deborah could help with the fastenings. There was a whistle from outside and a chunter of steam from the engine. With a lurch, the train began to move out of the station.

‘No, we don't,’ Sarah said. ‘And this year, too many dreadful things have happened that I never wanted. It's like a dream to me, to be going back to the peaceful countryside at Glenfee.’

Deborah helped her sister into bed, and then stood for a moment leaning on the wooden bar across the window, watching the lights flashing past behind clouds of steam. After a while, the glow of the city faded and the stars came out.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It's always very peaceful, at Glenfee.’

Glenfee

‘T
HAT’S IT, sir. Tuck the stock tight into your shoulder. Elbows firm, like a tripod. Heels flat on the ground. Rock . . . steady.’