The Body at the Tower

Eight





Miss Phlox’s lodging house



Coral Street, Lambeth





Coral Street was lively in the evening, with children and women calling to one another across the street and over garden walls. Washing was pegged out on clotheslines, itinerant hawkers stocked their pushcarts for the evening’s sales, an umbrella repairman was at work on a front step. It was a bustling domestic scene of the sort that still, occasionally, gave Mary a pang. Tonight, it made her eyes prickle. Had her father lived, that could have been her family’s fate: a modest but cosy home, younger brothers and sisters, and supper around the table every night.

Tired as she was, Mary knew the scene in her mind was improbable. Her parents had been very poor, her father away at sea more often than not, her brothers stillborn. Yet she clung stubbornly to the possibility. Her father had been a brave, intelligent, principled man and his death had destroyed all their lives. That was what she knew. Automatically, her hand moved towards her throat to touch the jade pendant he had left her. In the next fraction of a moment, she remembered that it was far away: safe in her desk at the Academy, along with her identity as a young woman. For now, she was simply a boy named Mark and if she didn’t want to foul up matters entirely, she’d better remember it.

She entered Miss Phlox’s lodging house by the side door. One step, and she was enveloped by the hot, dense fug of washing day: boiling water, lye soap, blueing and hot starch. Winnie, the maid of all work, was ironing bed-sheets in the kitchen and glanced up as Mary entered. “Supper’s in the larder.” Her voice was breathless, making her sound even younger than her twelve or thirteen years.

“Thank you.” Mary was suddenly ravenous and it took only a moment to cram down the two thin slices of bread-and-butter that constituted “supper”.

Winnie put the irons back in the fire to reheat and drew Mary a mug of small beer. Her eyes were fixed on Mary’s face. When Mary met her gaze she looked away, but the next moment resumed her staring. She’d been fascinated by Mark Quinn from the moment they’d met.

Mary swallowed her beer and tried to look oblivious. There were plenty of good reasons for Winnie to gawk at her. She was a new lodger, and therefore a novelty; she might have dirty smears on her face; she might be… Mary gave up. She knew very well the reason why the maid of all work looked at her with such analytical curiosity: Winnie was Chinese, like Mary’s father, and thus curious about Mary’s appearance. The dark hair. The geometry of her features. The “exotic” aspect that people so often remarked upon. For Winnie, these things probably added up to something very specific.

Mary cleared out of the kitchen as quickly as possible. She had no idea how to manage Winnie’s curiosity and wanted to avoid all conversation with the girl until she’d decided on a strategy. Should she deny everything? It was true that she didn’t look properly mixed race. Her skin was pale and her eyes round, so that much of the time she passed quite easily as black Irish. Even persistent questioners generally wanted to know whether she was Italian or Spanish. And that was just fine with Mary. The last thing she wanted was to acknowledge her Chinese heritage and deal with the questions and hostility it would inevitably invoke. Certainly not yet. She pushed away those thoughts as she climbed the second flight of stairs to her room, steeling herself for the next challenge: a new roommate who’d moved in today.

A man sat on the bed, pulling off his boots and enriching the small room with the pong of sweaty feet. As the door opened, he looked up. His gaze was both wary and weary.

“H’lo,” she gulped. She sounded authentically nervous, in any case.

“’Lo.”

What was the etiquette in situations like this? Later tonight, she’d be sharing a bed with this stranger – an uncomfortable fact of life when lodgings were cheap and beds dear. But how much did men talk among themselves? How would they organize who slept at which end? And how on earth would she guard her secret from him? “I’m Quinn,” she offered tentatively.

He nodded. “Rogers.”

When it became apparent he had nothing else to say, she hung her cap and jacket on a peg behind the door. At the small washstand, the water jug was partly filled and the scratchy towel carefully used on one half only. She washed briskly, scrubbing her face and neck and wetting her hair to rid it of grime. This was the best she’d be able to do for some time. At Miss Phlox’s, baths cost extra and were available only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. But even if she were to have the money, there was no way to manage a bath with privacy.

It was intolerable in here, under Rogers’s steady gaze. It wasn’t a hostile look, she decided – more like the disappointment that came of finding one wasn’t alone. She knew precisely how he felt. She had to do something. Anything, rather than sit here in stifling silence.

The dusky walk back to Westminster felt long this time. All along the streets, yellowy light glowed behind curtained windows. The effect was cosy and exclusive, and Mary felt a sharp, bittersweet longing to be at home at the Academy. Ordinarily, the prospect of an armchair and a cup of tea was dully domestic; tonight, it could not have seemed more appealing. The streets quietened dramatically as she crossed the bridge, passing into Westminster. Few lived here, and the area bustled only during the day. Her feet ached. Her muscles felt stiff. And she was so busy yawning that she nearly walked straight into a shadowy figure skirting along the tall wooden fence that divided the building site from the street.

Her training saved her. Before her mind could register the man and form a plan, she’d tucked herself into the shadows and gone motionless. Even so, the man seemed to sense something: he, too, stilled, glancing over his shoulder at the streetscape. After several long seconds he resumed movement but it was stealthier now, and he looked about at intervals.

Mary remained frozen, her back against the fence. The man was tall and powerful-looking in silhouette, although she couldn’t see his features or even make out his profile in the dim light. He wore a jacket and trousers, rather than a suit, but this information was of marginal use: who ever went prowling in his Sunday suit? He could be any of a million working men in London.

He wasted no time on the padlocked gate, instead choosing a section of the wooden fence. Another rapid survey of the scene. After a pause, he removed something small and curved from his pocket and, with a swift, low hand thrust, slammed it into the high wooden fence. It was a short, violent gesture, akin to stabbing a man in the thigh. He scanned the road one more time and, apparently satisfied, appeared to walk straight up the fence panel in one fluid movement. He paused at the top for a moment, then swung himself over and landed with a soft thud.

Mary grinned and slithered out from the shadows to the spot where he’d been. Sure enough, there was a small metal half-moon embedded in the fence. It was only two inches wide by one inch deep, but it offered the experienced user a toehold from which to clamber over the fence. She’d used one herself from time to time, in her past life.

She considered the climbing-grip thoughtfully. Impossible not to follow him. The difficulty was that he was almost certainly headed for Harkness’s office, which lay in direct view of this entry point. She could hardly follow his route and expect to go unnoticed. Neither could she borrow the climbing-grip to use on a different part of the fence; he would certainly miss it. No, she would have to find her own way in. And now that she was fully alert, the challenge was both alluring and energizing.

The first matter was to work out where the night-watchmen were. There were two, she recalled, who reported to Harkness at day’s end. There would be others at different posts around the Palace, guarding the House of Commons and House of Lords, but she would assume for now that they remained within their separate jurisdictions. Caution struggled with impulse. Caution won – a sign of how far she’d progressed since her early days in training, she thought with a touch of pride. She made a circuit of the building site, listening carefully and looking for the tell-tale glint of the watchmen’s lanterns.

Nothing.

Were they asleep? Gossiping comfortably in some inner sanctum? Whatever the case, they certainly weren’t doing their jobs. Mary’s lip curled with distaste. She disliked sloppiness, even if it might make her task easier. She stopped and listened again. To one side there were the sounds of the Thames: the sticky footsteps and excited calls of scavengers both human and animal; boatmen’s voices and the splash of their oars; someone, somewhere, crying. From the other rose the noises of the city – horseshoes and wheels on cobblestones, voices raised in taverns and houses, the constant murmur of millions of human lives intersecting. But the site itself was eerily quiet.

She chose as her entrance the site’s east wall, feeling her way along the fence until she found – by touch, not sight – the point she wanted. One of the fence planks was loose and it tilted under the pressure of her hand. She smiled. An unsupervised length of fence away from the gaze of the high street was a powerful temptation to boys. Jenkins and his mates had likely worried away at this plank until it became a convenient cat-flap, giving them access to the site away from Harkness’s watchful eye.

She was just small enough to squeeze through the gap. Inside, she stayed low to the ground and listened again: still nothing. It was a good opportunity, too, to scan the site. Places always looked different by night and it was especially true of this building site, which to her was still so unfamiliar even by day. Distance and dimension were distorted. Heaps of building materials and scaffolding frames took on strange shapes, both occult and comical. And St Stephen’s Tower itself seemed higher and more splendid than ever.

A faint scraping noise recalled her to the task in hand and she began to move towards its source, somewhere near Harkness’s office. Oddly, there was no sign of a light burning inside the small hut and the man hadn’t been carrying a dark lantern. The door, however, was slightly ajar and so she edged closer to the door-jamb and peeked through the gap.

The only reason she saw him in the near darkness was because he moved quickly. He took three decisive steps to Harkness’s desk, dipped into the top drawer and pocketed something without pausing to examine it. A slight shiver ran through her frame: this was no ordinary theft.

She had made no noise, but suddenly he was on the alert – as though he could sense her close scrutiny. His movements ceased. Slowly, she eased back slightly. He wouldn’t be able to see her, but all the same…

He pivoted towards the entrance. On instinct, she glided away from the office door and around the corner – and instantly was glad she had. His head popped out a second later, scanning the dark silence. A moment’s hesitation would have meant discovery. Still, his suspicions were not allayed. He moved cautiously but with impressive speed, conducting a thorough search of the area just outside the office. Mary was now on the retreat, keeping an eye on her quarry while in turn becoming his.

The strange, silent pursuit continued. He seemed increasingly certain that there was something or someone to find, while Mary moved faster towards her exit. She rounded a corner and came to a halt, blinking as she considered the solid wall before her. The wall couldn’t have sprung up in a matter of minutes. Had she come the wrong way? Then her eyes adjusted and she realized the “wall” was a shadow cast by some scaffolding in the moonlight.

The moon. It had shown itself while she was outside the office, spying on the thief. While most nights she’d have welcomed it, tonight it hampered her escape. Not only did it make her easier to spot, but it changed the appearance of nearly everything on site. Still, she moved with noiseless speed.

A small, open strip of land now stretched between her and the fence. The man was no longer absolutely silent in his pursuit. Was he less certain of his way? Or was he merely allowing her to hear him, hoping that she’d panic and make an error? Either way, he was close behind now. Had she time to cross the unsheltered patch? She glanced about, looking for hiding-places: a heap of rubble, a lean-to containing lumber, the entrance to the tower. None held out any hope of concealment if he followed; all were dead ends.

She drew one last deep breath, not caring if it was audible. This was her last chance. She sprinted with all her strength across the open stretch, her boots ringing clearly against the paving stones. As she dived for the fence, wriggling and kicking through the narrow gap, the boards snagged her clothes and scraped her hips and shins. She tumbled out into the street, laughing silently now as she heard her pursuer struggling and swearing. The wooden plank slapped down into place, possibly clipping him on its way. An adult would never fit through the gap. Not an adult male, at any rate.

She scrambled up and kept running, knowing she was in the clear but impelled by a surge of energy to keep moving, to clear out, to distance herself from that terrifying, exhilarating escapade. She was nearly back at Miss Phlox’s before she slowed to a walk. It was dark night, now; she had no idea what time. Her lungs tingled. The grazed skin of her hips and shins stung. When she let herself in the narrow gate, a sudden deep exhaustion gripped her. The front step, a wide slab of stone, looked wonderfully inviting; she could have curled up right there and gone straight to sleep. Instead, she stumbled up the two flights of stairs and fell into bed, fully clothed, unheeding of Rogers’s lumpy form and deep snores. Within seconds, she was asleep.