Her heart lurched too. She was on the brink of the truth. She must be very careful now. “Dunno about good- lookin’!” She tried to sound casual. “I reckon as ’e ’ad a beard.”
“Did you see anyone inside?” He was trying to keep his face calm, but his eyes, wide and brilliant, betrayed him. “Did they stop? Did they talk to anyone?”
She invented quickly. It would not matter if the man he was looking for had not stopped. It could have been for any reason, even to ask the way.
“Yeah.” She gestured ahead of her. “Pulled up an’ spoke ter a friend o’ mine, jus’ up there. She said as they was askin’ after someone.”
“Asking after someone?” His voice was high and scratchy.
She could almost smell the tension in him.
“A particular person? A woman?”
That was what he wanted to hear. “Yeah,” she said softly. “That’s right.”
“Who? Do you know? Did she say?”
She chose the one name she knew of connected with this story. “Annie summink.”
“Annie?” He gasped and all but choked, swallowing hard so he could breathe. “Are you sure? Annie who? Do you remember? Try to think back!”
Should she risk saying “Annie Crook”? No. Better not overplay her hand. “No. Begins with a C, I think, but I in’t certain.”
There was utter silence. He seemed paralyzed. She heard someone laugh fifty yards away, and out of sight a dog barked.
His voice was a whisper. “Annie Chapman?”
She was disappointed. Suddenly all the sense in it collapsed. She was cold inside.
“Dunno,” she said flatly, unable to conceal it. “Why? ’Oo was it? Some feller after a night out on the cheap?”
“Never mind,” he said quickly, trying to conceal the importance of it to him. “You’ve been immensely helpful. Thank you very much, very much indeed.” He fished in his pocket and offered her threepence.
She took it. At least she could return it to Tellman, give him something back of what she had spent. Anyway, depending upon where Remus went next, she might need it.
He left without even looking behind him, striding off over the cobbles, dodging a coal cart. Nothing was further from his mind than the possibility that he might be followed.
He went straight back down Commercial Street to the Whitechapel High Street. Gracie had to run every now and then to keep up with him. At the bottom he turned west and went to the first bus stop, but instead of traveling all the way back to the City, as she had expected, he changed again at Holborn and went south to the river and along the Embankment until he came to the offices of the Thames River police.
Gracie followed him straight in, as if she had business there herself. She waited behind him, her head down. She had taken the precaution of letting her hair out of its pins and rubbing a little dirt into her face. She now looked reasonably unlike the young woman Remus had stopped on Hanbury Street. In fact, she appeared rather like the urchins who scrambled for leftovers along the riverbank, and hoped she would be taken for one, if anybody bothered to look at her twice.
Remus was inventive also. When the sergeant who answered his call asked him what he wanted, he answered with a story Gracie was certain was created for the occasion.
“I’m looking for my cousin who’s disappeared,” he said anxiously, leaning forward over the counter. “I heard someone answering his description was nearly drowned near Westminster Bridge, on the seventh of February this year. Poor soul was involved in a coach accident that nearly killed a little girl, and in his remorse he tried to kill himself. Is that true?”
“True enough,” the sergeant answered. “Was in the papers. Feller called Nickley. But I can’t say as he really tried to kill ’isself.” He smiled twistedly. “Took ’is coat an’ ’is boots off afore ’e jumped, an’ anyone ’oo does that don’t mean it fer real.” His voice was laden with contempt. “Swam, ’e did. Fetched up on the bank along a bit, like yer’d expect. Took ’im ter Westminster ’Ospital, but weren’t nothin’ wrong wif ’im.”
Remus became suddenly casual, as if what he was asking now were an afterthought and scarcely mattered.
“And the girl, what was her name? Was she all right too?”
“Yeah.” The sergeant’s blunt face filled with pity. “Close call, poor little thing, but not ’urt, jus’ scared stiff. Said it weren’t the first time, neither. Nearly got run down by a coach before.” He shook his head, his lips pursed. “Said it were the same one, but don’t suppose she can tell one fancy big coach from another.”
Gracie saw Remus stiffen and his hands knot by his sides. “The second time? By the same coach?” In spite of himself his voice was sharp as if this new fact had momentous meaning for him.
The sergeant laughed. “No, ’course it weren’t! Just a little girl … only seven or eight years old. What’d she know about coaches?”
Remus could not contain himself. He leaned farther forward. “What was her name?”
“Alice,” the sergeant answered. “I think.”
“Alice what?”
The sergeant looked at him a little more closely. “What’s this all about, mister? You know summink as you should tell us?”
“No!” Remus denied it too quickly. “It’s just family business. Bit of a black sheep, you know? Want to keep it
