“Ah, that’s got it,” March said. He stood up and laid the cake knife on the counter, then reached down and hoisted the man to his feet. He held the man’s elbow, steadying him, and leaned him against the counter. Then March held up a finger and grabbed the cake knife back off the countertop. “Wouldn’t do to leave that within your reach, would it?”
“Let’s try this again,” Day said. “I’m going to take off your gag and you’re going to tell us your name. Leave the profanities out of it.”
The man nodded and Day pulled the gag down over his chin. The canvas was sodden with drool, and he wiped his fingers on the man’s filthy prison shirt.
“George,” the man said. “My name’s George.”
“George what?”
“George Hampstead. This is my shop. Someone broke in, some mad bloke with a murderous gleam in his eye, and he tied me up. Switched his clothes for mine and left me here for dead, he did.”
“He heard us suggest that just now,” Hammersmith said.
“Did not,” the man calling himself George Hampstead said.
“You were right here when we said it.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
Day grimaced. “Mr Hammersmith, do you remember those sketches we were shown of the escaped prisoners?”
“I do, sir.”
“Does this man resemble any of them?”
“He does, sir.”
“Which one? Do you remember?”
“The one called Napper, sir.”
“I never was!” the man in the prison uniform said. “You can’t go off a thing like that! It’s not no kinda proof.”
Day nodded. “We’ll get this whole thing straightened out. Don’t you worry.”
He turned and opened the door. The others had to shuffle about to make room for the door to swing inward. Day stepped outside and took a deep breath of fresh air. He hadn’t realized how stuffy it was inside the tea shop until he was out of it. Dawn had brought with it a bustle of people, up and down the street, most of them headed toward the far corner and away. Day presumed that was the direction of the commuter train to central London. He whistled and motioned to a little boy, who was sitting idly on a step in front of one of the homes. The lad ran over to him and Day produced a ha’penny from the pocket of his waistcoat.
“Would you like to earn a coin?”
“Like to earn a bigger one than that, if you’ve got it,” the boy said.
“How about a second coin just like it?” Day fished in his pocket again.
“What’ve I got to do?”
“Get to Scotland Yard and ask them to send round a wagon. Tell them one of the men’s been caught.”
“One of which men?”
“Never you mind. Just find Sergeant Kett and he’ll know what you mean.”
“Sergeant Kett,” the boy said. “He’s to send a wagon, you’ve caught a man.”
“Exactly right.”
The boy nodded once, sharply, and marched away, joining the throngs of men headed for that nearby train. Day turned around and almost bumped into an elderly man, who was stopped outside the tea shop and was staring at him with a puzzled expression.
“I say,” the man said.
“Terribly sorry,” Day said.
“What are you doing?”
“Police,” Day said. “My name is Inspector Day. Nothing to worry about. Please go about your business, sir.”
“But I can’t go about my business.”
“You can’t?”
“You’re blocking the way. That’s my tea shop.”
Day smiled. “Ah, very good, sir. Then you have the opportunity to clear up a small mystery for me.”
“A mystery?”
“Do you have anyone working for you here? Small fellow named George Hampstead? A bit jumpy?”
“No.” The man pulled himself up to his full height. “I’ve never had anyone working here except me. Never a need. What’s going on here?”
“Well,” Day said, “it’s all a bit complicated. Do you have a few minutes to spare?”
21
The contractions were coming every few minutes, and Claire didn’t know what to do. She curled up under the coverlet and hugged her knees and closed her eyes and tried to imagine the tiny life inside her. One day that life would be a person. One day that life would be a policeman or a housewife, a mother or a father, a living breathing human being. But right now, that life wanted to come out.
Claire reached under the edge of the mattress and brought out her diary. She unsnapped the catch and opened it and looked over the last entry she had made. Nothing much. Nothing that made her proud. Just a jot about feeling lonely and having trouble getting the buttons right on Walter’s shirts. There ought to be something more there. What if she died in childbirth? It was more than possible. Dr Kingsley told her not to think of such things, told her she was safe and healthy and that he would do his all for her. But he didn’t know. He’d never felt a contraction, he’d never given birth.
She turned a page and took her pencil and bit her lower lip. Another contraction hit and she grimaced, almost made a sound, but didn’t. At least there was that. She felt like pushing back against that pressure, but she was afraid of what might happen if she did.
Instead, she thought of her baby and what she could tell it. Her eyes closed, she felt the room moving, and she remembered skipping rope when she was a girl and hadn’t worried about dying. She thought about what it was like to be a child, and she hoped that she would be able to make her baby feel the way that she had when she was young. She opened her eyes and she wrote in her diary:
My skipping rope,
It passes over and it passes down.
My skipping rope,
She couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with down. She felt dizzy and unconnected, so she concentrated harder on the words. She crossed out the second line and wrote It passes under and it passes up. This posed the same problem. Cup? What did that have to do with skipping rope? Pup? Maybe the child was skipping rope with a dog? That seemed unlikely.
She tossed her diary aside and lay watching the ceiling swim around above her. There were more than enough nursery rhymes for children. She didn’t need to write her own.
Another contraction hit. She clenched her teeth and moved to her hand to her stomach. And then she felt something warm and wet moving under her bottom and up to the small of her back, and she pulled aside the blanket and there was liquid soaking into her fresh linens, a whole day’s work undone by her rebel body. Tears sprang to her eyes and she wiped them away.
Another contraction, this one the worst yet. Terrible pain, and why was it necessary to feel such pain when childbirth was such a common thing? She tensed up into a ball in the wet spot, but it wasn’t a spot, it was an ocean, and she clenched her hands into fists and thought about her horse, the little horse her father had given to her on the occasion of her thirteenth birthday, and she wondered if that horse was still galloping about somewhere on her parents’ land wondering why she didn’t visit it anymore. Why didn’t she take it apples and ride it anymore?
The pain passed, although she could still feel it, a faint drumbeat like her pulse somewhere far away. She sat up and looked down and there was blood in the bed, blood mixed with something clear and viscous, flecking the coverlet and soaking into her nightgown.
“Fiona!”
She licked her lips and concentrated on not panicking, except that everything felt wrong. Her body was somebody else’s body and it didn’t fit her properly, hadn’t been hers to begin with. She gasped and closed her eyes; again there was a twinge low in her belly, a soft strum of muscle and grit, and she screamed as loud as she could.
“Fiona!”
22
Jack stood patiently in the center of the parlor while Cinderhouse moved around him. The tailor had Jack try on the jacket first. Elizabeth sat quietly in his chair in the corner of the room, watching them alter one of his suits. The jacket’s shoulders were broader than Jack’s own shoulders, but not by much, and the slight difference helped with the sleeves. Jack’s arms had always been much longer than average and his enforced starvation hadn’t altered their length. Cinderhouse silently noted a few things, then had Jack try on the trousers. They were a bit long, but the tailor pinned up the hem of the left leg, made sure it broke properly against the top of Jack’s foot. He measured Jack’s waist, using a piece of the same twine they’d tied Elizabeth with, and had Jack take the suit off again.