He pointed up the street, as if giving her directions, and muttered: “This isn’t for your benefit, I’m trying to instruct O’Gilroy. Ah, he’s got it.”
The shabby figure was moving away at a slouching amble.
“Right, get the motor-car turned round, we’ll pick him up further along.”
In the dingier and less public surroundings of Endell Street, Ranklin swung the door open, O’Gilroy stepped in, and they zoomed off. Well, not zoomed, in a Daimler, but definitely hurried – through the wide tangle of traffic near the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, across New Oxford Street and up Bloomsbury Street. By then O’Gilroy knew as much or as little as there was to tell.
“What’s the address of this place?” Ranklin asked.
“14 Bloomsbury Gardens.” He knew that address, and checked with a card in his wallet: it was the one Gorkin had given him.
He hadn’t time to work out what that meant. “Are you armed?” he asked O’Gilroy and got a nod. That meant a .38 semi-automatic Browning: O’Gilroy was a modernist in these matters.
“Good, but keep it out of sight until I say so.”
It was a middle-middle class area which the young of the upper class regarded as daringly slummy. Most of it was squares like this: rows of tall, narrow terraced houses that had been built of yellow brick now black with London’s soot (like the rest of London), around a private but communal garden across the road. There were no front gardens, just a handful of steps leading up from the pavement to the front door, which had a fanlight above to align it with the tall windows.
Ranklin pressed the bell. After a while the door was opened by a tall young woman. It took a moment for Ranklin to decide that anarchists wouldn’t have maidservants, so she couldn’t be one. She had long, very definite pre-Raphaelite features and gingery hair drawn back into a bun. She wore a pale violet garment like a smock that went straight from ankle to throat without being visibly distracted.
She looked past Ranklin at the Daimler. “And who would you be?” Her voice was light, pleasant, educated.
“We’ve come to collect Ma’mselle Collomb.”
“She doesn’t want to go.”
Ranklin nodded. “The problem is, the police released her from custody to Mrs Finn. They think they’ve got first call on her. So, if Mrs Finn doesn’t get her, the police will.”
“That will be an example of police oppression.”
“Did you want an example?”
That hadn’t been the expected answer. She frowned.
Ranklin went on: “You do know that it’s a death they’re questioning her about?”
A slight, cool smile. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. They have no evidence-”
“They seem to have now; I’ve just come from the court. It’s murder, now. And a rather embarrassing one, a French witness. So the police feel a bit on their mettle. They’d rather like a Frenchwoman to have done it – keeps the British out of it, one might say. And an unworldly little girl from La Villette . . . by the time they’ve finished, she’ll have confessed to everything and the Jack the Ripper murders as well.”
She frowned again. “Do you really believe that?”
“Don’t you?”
She licked her thin lip s. “You’re just saying that.”
“I asked you if you believed it.”
“Well, yes. I certainly believe the police are . . .” She wasn’t quite sure what.
“Capitalist sheepdogs?” Ranklin suggested cheerfully. “I think they’re actually more complicated than that, but it still leaves the question of how you’re going to protect Ma’mselle Collomb from them.”
“They’d never dare come tromping in here.”
“Ah, that’s what you really believe, isn’t it? That they’re nice friendly men in uniform who tell you the way when you’re lost, just like nanny said. Well, probably they are to people who live in houses this size, but not to Berenice Collomb. And I think it would be rather sad for you to learn that by putting her on the gallows. Still, it’ll be a good chapter for your memoirs, so maybe you think it’s cheap at the price.”
She jerked the front door wide. “You’d better come in.”
A few steps down the narrow hallway was Gorkin, who had obviously been hearing every word.
“Hello, Dr Gorkin,” Ranklin called. “Sorry I haven’t had time for you to convert me, but been rather busy. Still am, as a matter of fact.”
“You have come to return Berenice to the rich Mrs Finn?”
“I have. Mrs Finn doesn’t like it either, but seems ready to go along with it on behalf of a fellow human being.” He turned back to the woman. “Can you fetch Ma’mselle Collomb?”
“You’d better come up and talk to her yourself.”
They went up to the second floor. The house was sparsely furnished, mostly with rather rigid, elongated Art Nouveau pieces, oriental pottery and a lot of paintings in bold primary colours. And William Morris wallpaper, of course: the silly bastard had once proclaimed himself an anarchist, hadn’t he?
The woman rapped on a door and said: “Berenice?”
“Ils sont retourner?”
“Oui,” Ranklin called. “Avec moi -James Spencer. Vous avez un choix: venir avec moi et Madame Finn, ou avec les flics.”
She told him, in colloquial French, to go and fuck himself. Ranklin grinned at the woman. “You’d better talk to her. I’ll let Dr Gorkin show me the error of my ways.” He wanted to get Gorkin out of the conversation to come. He had nothing against the man except for his tendency to be present, watching and listening. For example, he had followed them up the stairs.
So Ranklin took him by the arm, led him aside and launched straight in: “One thing that bothers me about anarchism, especially when it depends on a revolution, is the transition period from the ancien regime to a perfect anarchist state. Can you get people to give up their old dog-eat-dog ways overnight, without a period of education? – and what happens during that period?”
“People – working people – are oppressed, not corrupted. You see it everywhere in working communities, the help they give each other. It is the bourgeoisie who put up fences and have secrets.”
Thinking of Aunt Maud’s house, Ranklin couldn’t but agree. “You could be right – but there’s getting to be an awful lot of the middle class: are they all going to perish in the revolution?”
“They can choose.” Gorkin was looking over Ranklin’s shoulder, trying to hear what the woman was saying to the still-locked door.
“You’re talking to me,” Ranklin reminded him. “So, the middle class can make a quick choice: either join the revolution or off to Madame la Guillotine?”
“Once the revolution has happened, there will be no need for guillotines. It will be secure – in science, a stable state, if you understand that.”
“The only truly stable explosive is one that’s exploded already? Yes, I think – ah.”
He had heard the click of the door behind him. Berenice came out, carrying a small, tattered shopping basket. She gave Ranklin a look of sullen dislike, and he smiled back and gestured politely at the stairs. The woman had got things this far; let her stay in charge. He followed them down, keeping Gorkin well separated.
Outside, O’Gilroy was standing by the open rear door of the Daimler. He let Berenice in, then went to sit by the driver.
The woman had stopped at the foot of the steps and Ranklin paused to ask: “One thing: was Berenice out on Wednesday night? – the night before last?”
“Yes.” Cautiously.
“What time did she get in?”
“About ten o’clock.”
“Was it only you who saw her then?”
“Oh no. There were several of us.” She half-turned towards Gorkin, watching from the doorway. “Including Dr Gorkin.”
“Have the police asked you about this?”
“No.”
“If they get really serious, they will. Tell them the truth. It helps her. Thank you, Miss, er . . .”
“Venetia Sackfield.”
They shook hands, hello and goodbye, and Ranklin got into the back seat of the Daimler and they headed for the Sherring flat in Clarges Street.