The Hangman's Secret Read online

  CHAPTER 10

  In the front hall of the prison, the wardens are waiting with my camera, trunk and satchel on the desk. They grin at Hugh and me. Uneasy, I open the camera case while Hugh inspects the contents of the trunk. Everything is accounted for, undamaged. Then I pick up my satchel and hear an ominous tinkle. When I open it and shake the flat cases of glass negative plates, they rattle. All the plates are broken.

  I glare at the wardens. “You broke them on purpose.”

  They shrug, not denying it. Hugh says, “We’re going to lodge a complaint against you.”

  “Lodge it where the sun don’t shine.”

  Still hot-tempered, Hugh lunges at the men. I restrain him, hand him the trunk, grab my other things, and pull him toward the door. “Let’s just go.”

  Outside Newgate, an icy wind stirs the quagmire of drizzle and soot that immerses the city. Church bells ring five o’clock, but it’s as dark as midnight. As we trudge toward the station, we stay close to the prison walls in case the boys leading horses and carriages through the murk accidentally wander onto the sidewalk.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper with the Reverend Starling and those guards,” Hugh says. “I could have gotten us both arrested.”

  “It’s all right. I’m just glad we got away before anything else bad happened.”

  “I shouldn’t have grilled the Reverend Starling so hard.” Hugh seems genuinely contrite. “It was cruel of me.”

  I can’t disagree. “You apologized. And it did get results.”

  “The chaplain and the doctor didn’t exactly have a personal interest in keeping Harry Warbrick alive. We don’t know about Governor Piercy or the sheriff. But I’m not ready to call it quits on the Amelia Carlisle angle. Somebody in Newgate wants to hurt us. It must be one of the witnesses to her execution.”

  “I’ve been thinking maybe not.”

  “Who else could it be?” Hugh sounds puzzled.

  “Someone who has a grudge against us. Someone with connections inside Newgate.”

  “Who—?”

  Two men emerge from the fog, walking toward us. One wears a police constable’s uniform, the other an overcoat and derby. It’s Barrett and Inspector Reid. We stop abruptly. Hugh says, “Oh. I see.”

  The attack could have been Reid’s belated revenge on us.

  “Sarah?” Barrett says, his voice a mixture of surprise and dismay. My heart plunges.

  Reid favors us with an unpleasant smile. “Here are the bad pennies, cropping up again.” Framed by his fluffy, graying mustache and beard, his mouth is pink, his teeth sharp. There’s no surprise in his cold brown eyes.

  “We could say the same about you,” Hugh says.

  “What are you doing here?” Barrett asks.

  I wanted to see him alone, explain, and smooth things over between us. All I can do now is tell him the truth. “Investigating Harry Warbrick’s murder.”

  Barrett’s expression hardens. “I should have guessed.” I can tell he wants to upbraid me for going behind his back, but he won’t make a personal scene in front of Reid. Then he notices the bandages on Hugh’s and my faces, and concern replaces his anger. “What happened to you?”

  “I was pushed down the stairs inside Newgate,” I say.

  “I was thrown into a boxing match with some very unfriendly prisoners,” Hugh says.

  “Who did it?” Barrett demands. He’s not so angry with me that he’ll excuse anyone who hurt us. His fists clench as if he wants to thrash our attackers even though he thinks we were doing something we shouldn’t have been.

  “We couldn’t see. The lights were out,” I say.

  Confused, Barrett looks up at the jail, then back at us. “Why were you in there?”

  “They think the murder has something to do with Amelia Carlisle,” Reid says. “Sir Gerald pulled strings to get them interviews with the people who were at her hanging.”

  “Who told you that we would be in Newgate?” I ask Reid.

  “A little bird.”

  Barrett turns his anger on Reid. “You knew? And you didn’t tell me?”

  Reid smirks. “I just did.” Because his superiors won’t let him fire Barrett, he instead plays every possible dirty trick on him; he’s not content just to block Barrett’s promotion.

  “So that’s why we’re here,” Barrett says. “You wanted to catch them when they came out and wanted me to see.”

  Reid points his gloved finger at Barrett. “Smart lad.” Then he asks Hugh and me, “So what did you learn about the Baby Butcher’s hanging?”

  Hugh ignores the question. “Maybe that’s not the only reason you’re here. Were you responsible for the attacks on us? Did you come to admire your handiwork?”

  “Is it true?” Barrett demands.

  Reid holds up his palms and widens his eyes in an exaggerated pose of innocence. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. But I’ll buy a drink for whoever did the deed.”

  “It certainly seems like something you would do, setting prison guards on us,” Hugh says in disgust. “You’re too much of a coward to fight us yourself.”

  Reid bristles. “If I’d wanted you done in, you wouldn’t be standing up talking now.”

  Barrett takes a step toward Reid. “If it was you, I swear I’ll—”

  Reid chuckles and pats the air. “Take it easy. Lay a hand on your commanding officer, and the top brass will have to pull your badge, even if you’re their blue-eyed boy. Don’t ruin your career for her.” He sneers at me. “She’ll do you dirty to win the contest.”

  He’s trying to drive a wedge between Barrett and me. If he can’t get Barrett off the force and me thrown in prison, he’ll settle for splitting us up. Barrett looks from Reid to me, his eyes stormy. He walks a few paces away, as if he doesn’t trust himself not to lose control, and stands with his back to me. My temper is ready to explode at Reid, who’s not the only one with a grudge. In the past, he terrified me, tormented me, and delivered my friends and me into the hands of Jack the Ripper.

  “Hate to interrupt this little chat, but Sarah and I should be going.” Hand on my arm, Hugh propels me along the sidewalk before I say or do something regrettable. “Barrett, why don’t you come to our house after you go off duty? We’ll talk things over.”

  Reid steps in our path, forcing us to halt. “Not so fast. Tell me what you learned about Amelia Carlisle.”

  “Read about it in the newspaper tomorrow.” I shan’t save Reid the trouble of interviewing the prison staff.

  “I could arrest you for obstructing justice,” Reid says.

  “You and who else?” Hugh says.

  Reid glances at Barrett, who doesn’t move. Although Barrett is furious, he’ll let the bad blood between him and Reid get worse rather than lay the hand of the law on Hugh and me. Reid knows it too, and his vexed expression says he hasn’t forgotten the occasions when we resisted arrest and he came out the loser. As Hugh and I resume walking, Reid moves backward, facing us and keeping in step with us while Barrett stays behind. I’m glad not to be arrested, but I feel bad because Barrett is risking his own welfare for my sake.

  “Spill the beans,” Reid says. “Then get out of my case.”

  “If we do, Sir Gerald will just put someone else on it,” Hugh says. “He’s going to win the contest with or without us.”

  “I’ll settle for that.” Reid seems as angry about being pitted against us as about the contest itself. He doesn’t want us to complicate the Warbrick investigation as we did the Ripper and the Mariner cases. Now he raises his eyebrows as if at a sudden, pleasing thought. “Let’s talk about Mr. Benjamin Bain.”

  My heart seizes. I stop in my tracks.

  Reid grins, pleased by the dismay I can’t hide. “He murdered a little girl in 1866. What was her name? Oh yes—Ellen Casey. Then he absconded.”

  “My father didn’t murder her.” My voice wobbles, for I’ve no evidence to banish my own doubts about his innocence, let alone the police’s belief that he’s guilty.
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  “The investigation is on hold because we haven’t enough manpower to devote to a twenty-four-year-old unsolved murder,” Reid says. “But I thought it worth pursuing in my spare time. I’ve dug up some new clues to your father’s whereabouts.”

  Shock and alarm clutch my heart. I look over my shoulder at Barrett. He’s standing half a block away, out of earshot, almost invisible in the fog.

  Hugh comes to my defense. “Leave her father out of this.”

  Reid chuckles. “Here’s the deal: you quit the contest, and I’ll let the Ellen Casey murder stay on hold. If you don’t, I’ll follow up on those clues.” He tips his hat in mock courtesy, says, “A pleasant evening to you, Miss Bain, Lord Hugh,” and strolls away.

  * * *

  On the underground train, Hugh and I stand in the aisle, clinging to straps. The swaying motion jolts us against the other people crammed into the car, which is dimly lit when the train passes gas lamps in the tunnel, then pitch-dark between them. Hugh shouts in my ear so that I can hear him above the racket of the wheels on the tracks and the thunder of the engine.

  “Reid is bluffing. He doesn’t really have any new clues.”

  How I long to believe it! “But if he’s been hunting my father, he might have found some.”

  “Reid couldn’t find his own backside at night.”

  I’m still afraid that the shadow of the past is coming closer, getting darker. “Sally saw our father in London yesterday. Maybe he ran into someone who knew him from the past, someone who tipped Reid off.”

  “Maybe Sally was mistaken,” Hugh says.

  Yesterday I was torn between hope that she really did see Benjamin Bain and fear that when we finally reunited with him, we would learn that he’d murdered Ellen Casey. Now I only hope he was a figment of Sally’s wishful imagination. “If he falls into Reid’s hands, he’ll be railroaded to the gallows even if he’s innocent.”

  “Then you know what this means.”

  “Yes. I have to find my father before Reid does.” And ask him, at long last, whether he killed Ellen and why he abandoned Sally and me.

  “You will,” Hugh says. “You found Jack the Ripper when Reid and all of his horses and all of his men couldn’t.”

  The train arrives at Blackfriars Station with a screeching of brakes and a push toward the doors. Hugh says, “I’ll report to the Daily World office. You go look for your father.”

  I’m still reluctant. My father’s answers to my questions will determine whether I warn him that Reid is on his trail. I can’t in good conscience let a murderer go free. If he says he wants nothing to do with Sally and me, would that make turning him over to the police easier? “I’ll go with you. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Hugh and I weave our way, carrying my equipment, through noisy crowds in Fleet Street. Light from the buildings, gas lamps along the street, and lanterns swinging from carriages lend the dark, foggy scene the aspect of a carnival at night. Whistles shrill as police constables direct traffic, and people flock to the warmth of the public houses. Inside the Daily World headquarters, we find Sir Gerald, Mr. Palmer, and Malcolm Cross seated at the conference table as if they’ve been awaiting our return.

  “Well?” Sir Gerald says.

  Hugh and I describe what happened at Newgate. When we’re finished, Malcolm Cross scoffs. “So you didn’t prove that Amelia Carlisle’s execution has a smidgen to do with Harry Warbrick’s murder. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  Mr. Palmer hesitates before he says, “They did identify Mrs. Warbrick’s lover.” He sounds reluctant to give us any credit at all. “But his motive for the murder seems personal rather than related to the hanging.”

  Sir Gerald narrows his eyes in thought. “I think Miss Bain and Lord Hugh are right about the attacks—someone at Newgate thinks they’re getting too close to a dirty secret. ‘Witnesses keep mum about shady business at the Baby Butcher’s hanging. Reporters attacked for trying to investigate.’ Run something like that in tomorrow’s paper.”

  Mr. Palmer raises a feeble protest. “But we don’t know whether it’s true.”

  “When has that ever stopped us from printing a good story?” Sir Gerald says.

  I experience a sudden qualm. I’m glad Sir Gerald is taking our side, but his opinion isn’t evidence that we’re right. Maybe he likes our theory about Amelia Carlisle because it will inflate the Warbrick murder and the contest into an even bigger story. Or maybe his recent nervous breakdown has impaired his judgment.

  “We don’t want a libel suit,” Mr. Palmer says.

  “Just don’t openly accuse anybody of anything,” Sir Gerald says in a tone of overtaxed patience.

  Hugh and I don’t mention my alternate theory—that Inspector Reid was behind the attacks. If the Daily World accused Reid, he would retaliate by airing the story of Ellen Casey’s murder and name my father as the prime suspect. I don’t want it published, and I wouldn’t trust Sir Gerald to withhold it for my sake. An article in the Daily World could put everyone in London on the lookout for Benjamin Bain.

  “You’re on the right track,” Sir Gerald tells Hugh and me. “Keep up the good work.”

  His praise only adds to my uneasiness about keeping secrets from him. I hate to imagine what he would do if he found out. I think of Barrett and wonder what to say to him the next time I see him—if there is a next time.

  “Miss Bain was clumsy. Lord Hugh picked a fight,” Cross protests. “They made up a story about an attack so you wouldn’t think they were incompetent fools.”

  Hugh’s eyes glint with the same heat as during the fight. “What did you learn today, Mr. Cross? Have you solved the murder?”

  Cross’s face takes on a sulky expression. “I’m still following my lead.”

  “Follow it faster,” Sir Gerald says. “Dig up something soon, or I’ll put you on investigating Amelia Carlisle’s hanging.”

  “Yes, Sir Gerald.” Cross glowers at Hugh and me, irate because our stock with Sir Gerald has risen while his has fallen.

  “We’re going to solve this case. We’ll keep shaking trees until something falls out!” Sir Gerald bangs his fist on the table.

  We recoil from the blaze of zeal in his eyes. The temperature in the room seems to rise ten degrees. He’s like the sun—he has the power to change the atmosphere. I was right: this case means more to him than just a good story; the contest is more than a game to win. And it’s not on account of Harry Warbrick, a man he wouldn’t have given the time of day when he was alive. Sir Gerald has a sense of unfinished business due to Robin’s kidnapping, no matter that justice was served in the bloodiest, most personal fashion. His need for revenge is so insatiable that he’ll exact it from a stranger who killed a stranger.

  “By God, we’re going to get the bastard,” he says.

  And heaven help anyone who fails to do his part or stands in Sir Gerald’s way.

  CHAPTER 11

  That evening I hurry along Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. Ornate gas lamps glow in front of tall, stately brick townhouses. Across the street, beyond the green, the river hides beneath the fog. I hear the water lapping at the rocks; smell its fishy, fetid breath; and shiver in the chill wind. The house where Sally works and lives belongs to her employer, who owns a shipyard. It has a white marble facade on the first story, and its large windows glitter with light. I bypass the gate in the black iron fence and walk around the corner to the narrow, cobblestoned alley behind the house. The smell of manure issues from stables across the alley. I knock on a plain wooden door flanked by dustbins. Sally isn’t allowed to receive visitors at the front entrance. Long moments pass before a woman opens the door. In her forties, she has gray-streaked brown hair coiled atop her head; she wears a black frock and white apron. She’s the last person I wanted to see.

  The feeling is mutual. “What are you doing here?” Mrs. Albert, Sally’s mother, demands. Hostility deepens the lines in her pretty oval face.

  “I need to see Sally.”

  “You can�
�t,” Mrs. Albert snaps.

  She’s hated me since the day we met. We got off on the wrong foot, and I’m a reminder that Benjamin Bain—whom she knew as George Albert, his false name—already had a wife and child when she married him. No matter that my mother is long dead and my father’s deception isn’t my fault; she bears a grudge against me. I suppose that because she can’t punish my father for abandoning her and Sally, I’m a convenient target for her anger.

  “Sally is busy helping with dinner,” Mrs. Albert says.

  I hear pans clattering in the basement kitchen and smell the savory odors of cooking food. My stomach grumbles. I’ve not eaten since breakfast. “This is an emergency.”

  Mrs. Albert glares as if I’m trying to fool her. “Isn’t it enough that Sally spends her days off with you? Can’t you leave her alone?”

  My temper heats up, but I clamp a tight lid on it. “Sally and I are sisters. We have a right to see each other.”

  “You don’t have the right to fill her head with nonsense. You told her that her father is alive and in London. And now she thinks she’s seen him!” Mrs. Albert is spitting with rage.

  “He is alive.”

  “Even if he were, he wouldn’t be hanging around you and Sally. Remember, he left you. He left all of us.” Mrs. Albert’s brown eyes brim with pain.

  Sally has let on that her mother prefers to think Benjamin Bain is dead because it’s more comfortable than dredging up the past, opening unhealed wounds. I think Mrs. Albert is afraid of what will happen to her and Sally if his past catches up with him. I wonder whether she knows something about him that she’s not telling.

  “Why can’t you let sleeping dogs lie?” Mrs. Albert’s question is a plea for me to do exactly that. Before I can try to explain, she says, “It was an evil day when you turned up out of the blue. Sally used to be a good girl, content with her place. Now she’s full of silly notions. She wants to be a writer and have her own house and live her own life.”

  I gape in surprise, for Sally has told me none of this, and I’ve never said anything to encourage her to change her situation.