The Daughters of Gentlemen (30 page)

A
s the cab rattled its way towards Praed Street Jonathan Quayle, almost hysterical with anxiety, enumerated all the places he had been to in search of Flora. ‘I tried all the neighbours first, but none of them had seen her, and Mrs Gribling’s house, and then I wondered if she had gone to Miss Gilbert and Miss John and so I went there, but they were out and the maid on a half day holiday. And then I thought, of course I am being very foolish, it was something in the
newspaper
that alarmed her, although whether that would have sent her
to
a place or
from
a place, I really didn’t know.’ He pulled a crumpled copy of the
Illustrated Police News
from his pocket and stared helplessly at the front page. ‘I looked at all the pictures and I didn’t know what to think, so I tried as many things as I could – I went to Westbourne Hall, but that was boarded up, and the school but they were closed. Mr Paskall’s office, only he was out of course, but the young gentleman was very sympathetic and said if anyone of Flora’s description came there he would alert Mrs Gribling at once. And then of course I thought she might have come to you.’

‘Did she seem afraid when she ran out?’

‘No,’ he said, with a puzzled look, ‘and that is the strangest thing. For the first time since I have known her she didn’t look afraid. She seemed – I suppose I would say that she seemed determined.’

Frances considered the possibilities. ‘Did the suffrage society hold a meeting today?’ she asked.

‘I am not sure.’

‘Does Mrs Quayle receive literature from the society?’

He nodded emphatically. ‘Yes, she does, very often, and reads it with great attention.’

‘Then,’ said Frances, ‘if there is a meeting today she would have known about it and might have gone to the place where it was being held. And Miss Gilbert and Miss John would be there and not at home.’

‘Oh – I didn’t think of that!’ he said, brightening. ‘Yes, of course, you may be right.’

‘Do you know where they hold their meetings?’

‘There are many halls in Bayswater which they might have used, depending on the numbers expected.’

‘If she is with those ladies she will be quite safe,’ Frances reassured him.

He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘I did learn one thing before Flora ran away. She said she wanted to confess everything to me, so that we might have no secrets. It seems that she is the author of the pamphlet you came asking about. I was very surprised as she has never done anything like this before, and she told me all about how she came to write it. And of course it is those very pamphlets which have caused all the excitement at the school.’

‘Did she tell you who took them to the school?’

‘Yes, it appears that it was Mrs Sandcourt.’

‘Mrs Sandcourt?’ said Frances, with very great surprise.

‘Flora told me that they had been corresponding using Mrs Gribling’s address, although she was careful to maintain the impression that she was living abroad. It was Flora and Mrs Sandcourt, who thought of the plan to write the pamphlets. Mrs Gribling had them printed and then delivered them to Mrs Sandcourt who took them to the school.’

‘However did the correspondence commence?’ asked Frances. ‘And why? I don’t believe they were very great friends at school.’

‘Mrs Sandcourt chanced to meet Mrs Gribling at the Christmas bazaar and asked if she could write to Flora. Flora said she hoped that because Mrs Sandcourt was so often there as a patron she could give her news of her cousin Wilhelmina, who is still there.’

Frances recalled that at the bazaar Mrs Venn had approached Mrs Gribling under her previous name of Clare. Selina must have overheard this and taken the opportunity to make her acquaintance. But why, she wondered, had Selina wanted to start a correspondence with Flora? Was she trying on her father’s behalf to trace the elusive Caroline Clare? Had she known of the secret wedding? And while Frances knew why Flora would want to distribute the pamphlets she could not understand why Selina, as a patroness of the school, would connive at any action that might bring the establishment into disrepute.

As they reached the hotel it appeared that the prospect of the meeting had excited all the citizens of Bayswater – either that or they had sensed that some free entertainment might be on offer – and the street was almost choked with carriages and cabs, while omnibuses were being brought to a halt and men on laden dreys with goods to deliver were rapidly losing patience with the crowds and each other. Anyone who had an opinion on anything had decided that this was a good place to be. There were groups of Liberals and Conservatives getting up little meetings, and the temperance society was trying to persuade passers-by to sign the pledge. A small party of anti-vivisectionists were carrying placards and shouting out their appeals, and one had a large board with a chalked message urging people of the good sense of vegetarianism. A lady was scurrying about pushing pamphlets into people’s hands, denouncing the dangerous practice of vaccination, while a lone man paraded grimly up and down with a placard complaining about Mr Whiteley’s new building in Queen’s Road, which was obscuring its neighbour’s light.

Frances and Quayle left the cab and somehow inserted themselves into the throng, looking about for Flora, but it was hard to discern anyone in the great crush of people.

Vendors were everywhere, with newspapers, pamphlets, matches, flowers, buns, pies, and fruit. As the crowd grew so it attracted still more people, who swarmed like flies around a nutritious piece of meat; singers, jugglers, beggars, people with some novelty to display. They appeared to come out of nowhere but most probably spent a great deal of their day lurking around Paddington station, and they had all suddenly seen the excitement and descended on the one spot. Tom was there, his buttons so shiny they almost glittered, offering to carry messages and parcels, and Frances also spotted Chas and Barstie, who appeared to be doing nothing at all other than watch the scene with enormous satisfaction. She greeted them and they doffed their hats with great gallantry.

‘Are you overseeing Mr Paskall’s interests?’ asked Frances.

‘His and others,’ admitted Chas.

A cab drew up at speed and Theodore, looking very anxious and so engrossed in his own concerns that he noticed no one else, jumped out and hurried into the hotel.

‘Now that is curious,’ said Barstie. ‘Son not minding the shop for his father. I wonder what he’s about?’

‘Running from the amorous designs of Lydia Matthews, perhaps,’ said Frances. ‘If the fathers hope to make a match there, I think they will be disappointed.’

‘Oh I found out that that was never a match,’ said Barstie. ‘Something else was in the wind, but I never heard what.’

A person in motley danced by to the tune of a tin whistle. ‘Well,’ said Frances, ‘it is quite a carnival. It lacks only a brass band.’

The words were no sooner spoken when she heard the rhythmic thudding of a drum, coming from the direction of Craven Road. There were three firm beats, a pause, then three more, followed by a regular continuous pounding which, judging by its increasing volume, was drawing closer. As she looked about for the approaching musicians, there began a sound that Frances had never heard before, like a hundred insects all loudly buzzing in tune, to be joined almost immediately by the voices of women raised in song. Marching towards her down the middle of the street were the ladies of the Bayswater Women’s Suffrage Society, arrayed in their purple sashes. Some were singing a rousing melody called ‘Women of England Unite!’ – some, with puffed cheeks and red faces, were blowing heartily on instruments like flattened metal pipes. Miss John had outdone herself with a new banner, a pure white silken flutter almost the width of the street, with the name of the society stitched in glowing scarlet and she and Miss John supported it on either side with tall poles, so it paraded almost ten feet above the ground. Leading the company, her bandaged head held high, was the proud and valiant figure of Flora Quayle, beating a drum.

‘Oh – my – good – Lord!’ exclaimed that lady’s adoring husband. ‘My darling girl! Oh, she is a miracle!’

Carriages continued to arrive, and Frances saw in quick succession Cedric handing down an auburn-haired youth, a sunburnt gentleman she guessed was Mr Younge, then Mr Miggs, swollen with his own importance, brandishing his silver case which clicked and snapped as he distributed his little white cards to anyone who would take one. It was as she watched him that the unresolved thought that had been sitting at the back of Frances’ mind came up polished and complete, and she determined that as soon as the meeting was over she would write to Inspector Eaves of the Hillingdon police.

Miggs was soon flanked by his supporters; Mr Younge, Reverend Day – the chaplain of St Stephens Church – Dr Collin a respected Bayswater physician, and Inspector Sharrock. Frances suspected that Sharrock was there as much to see that order was kept and the law observed as any great liking for Mr Miggs. Mr Rawsthorne arrived with his clerk, and since he greeted everyone with great friendliness it was not immediately apparent for which side he was acting. Four of Sharrock’s largest constables strode up, and he quickly gave them their orders before they went inside.

The great phalanx of women halted outside the hotel, the buzzing instruments – which Quayle said were an American novelty called a kazoo – continuing to accompany the song, the drum beat thumping away while the banner danced on its poles. The end of the song was met by wild cheers and a scattering of leaflets.

Quayle rushed up to Flora. ‘Oh my darling, I have been so afraid for you!’ he exclaimed.

Flora looked him in the eye. ‘I shall never be afraid again,’ she declared.

He touched her hand appealingly. ‘And will you come home, now, my dear?’

‘When the meeting is over we will march home together,’ she said.

Quayle, who would have denied her nothing she asked at that moment, nodded and kissed her flushed cheeks. Frances felt sure that he would remain outside with her.

She turned to see if Chas and Barstie were about to join the crowds who had started flowing into the hotel for the meeting, but found that they had both vanished. She looked about her and saw something – a shadow at the corner of the street – a stain of dark grease by the wall, the flash of a knife and the hint of a broken-toothed grin. It was the Filleter. In the next moment, he was gone.

Frances hurried indoors, where anxious commissionaires were directing everyone through a handsome high ceilinged foyer past large rooms from which the scent of tea and coffee wafted tantalizingly, and the murmur of polite conversation muffled by pastries and self-satisfaction told of another life that might be lived. They were shown to a room with seating for about a hundred persons, which soon became uncomfortably packed. At one end was a row of three tables. Miggs and his supporters sat on one side of the room and Mrs Venn and the three governors on the other. Between them was Mr Flood, an auctioneer by trade, whose extensive experience on the Paddington vestry – a group of gentlemen whose discussions often led to some conflict and comments of a personal nature – it was hoped would enable him to keep the meeting civil. Nevertheless, Sharrock was taking no chances and had stationed his constables about the perimeter of the room.

With the chattering assembly in their places, some seated and some being obliged to stand at the back, Mr Flood gave a firm and authoritative tap of his gavel and called the meeting to order. There was an obedient hush and he proceeded to introduce those on either side of him. ‘I also see in front of me many ladies who have been pupils at the school, and are now pleased to be its patrons, as well as parents of past and present pupils, and the current teaching staff.’

‘Not
all
of the teaching staff,’ said Miggs pointedly, and a titter went around the room.

‘Everyone who wishes to make a statement will have ample opportunity to do so,’ said Mr Flood. ‘I would like to begin by calling upon Mr Miggs to say a few words about the reasons for his dissatisfaction with the arrangements at the Bayswater Academy.’

Mr Miggs rose and surveyed his audience with an unattractive smile and Frances thought for an unpleasant moment that he might begin by reciting a poem, but, fortunately for the assembled company, he did not. ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘I have brought you all together to address a matter of very grave concern. It will not have escaped your notice that there have been rumours afoot lately that reading matter of an unsuitable nature has been distributed to the innocent young girls of Mrs Venn’s academy. Many of us who know and respect the lady will have dismissed the charge as the fiction of a jealous rival. Some will have satisfied themselves that the report was in error, or that the material, if it existed at all, was not as dangerous as supposed. I have to inform you that I, through my own efforts, have succeeded where all others have failed and obtained a copy of this item of literature, and today I can advise you that it is very much worse than even I had feared.’

There was the sound of a number of gasping intakes of breath. ‘But I do not ask you to accept my unsupported word.’ He took a copy of the pamphlet from his pocket and placed it on the table before him. A few heads on the front row craned forward to try and read the words. ‘I hope you will be able to make your own judgement. I propose to read it aloud.’