The Bedlam Detective

resisted democracy within its own ranks and saw consultation as “interference”; while to her mind, the use of violence in a cause dishonored it.

Tonight’s speaker was making a case for a program of social disobedience that defied the law, but stopped short of vandalism and arson. The building’s steam heat was fired up and the big room was warm and stuffy, in contrast to the nipping air of the street.

“I ask you,” the speaker on the stage was saying, “what is the good of the constitutional policy to those who have no constitutional weapon?”

She was a tall, strong-boned woman, and no stranger to public debate. Her references were impeccable: twice arrested, and once sent to prison where she’d been pinioned and photographed, with her picture being distributed to police forces and institutions across the land.

Evangeline slid along into one of the empty seats in the back row as the speaker went on, “When someone does not listen, you can request their attention. But when they will not listen, then their attention has to be compelled. They say they will not deal with us unless they have to. So we must make it that they have to. When the subject of the forced feeding of women in prison is met with laughter in Parliament, we know that we can expect neither grace nor courtesy from those we address. It is the government alone that we regard as our enemy, and the whole of our agitation should be directed to bring just as much pressure as necessary upon those people who can deal with our grievance.”

A woman farther along the row caught Evangeline’s eye.

“Thought you weren’t coming,” she mouthed.

“Sorry,” Evangeline whispered back. “I’ll stay after and help clear up.”

The address went on for about another twenty minutes. Evangeline listened intently for the first ten, struggled to keep her attention in focus for the next five, and fought against drowsiness for the remainder. It was too hot in here, and her day had been a long one. But the talk ended with some spirited questions, most of them from the first three rows of the audience, and the change in tone helped to rouse her.

“We have to agitate,” the speaker concluded in response to an earnest young telegraphist in the second row. “We can organize a peaceful demonstration as well as anyone. But when we fill Hyde Park with ten thousand voices and our own prime minister affects not to hear, what then are we to do?”

After the talk, tea was served. Some women left early. Many of those who stayed behind were young and single and fired up by what they’d heard. Usually Evangeline would have been an eager contributor to their conversations. But tonight, it was as if she hadn’t the heart or the energy to join in. Instead, she offered to help with the refreshments.

At one point she set an empty cup on a table, forgot that it was there, and knocked it to the floor with her sleeve only a moment later.

“What’s the matter?” said her earlier companion from the back row. She was a Yorkshirewoman, and her name was Lillian. She worked in the drapery department of Derry and Toms department store, over on Kensington High Street.

“Just tired,” Evangeline said.

Lillian cocked her head in the direction of the doors. “Go on, then,” she said. “I can manage here.”

“No,” Evangeline said with a half-serious smile. “This is all the fun I ever have.”

At nine o’clock they set about collecting and stacking chairs; most of those remaining began a halfhearted effort to help and then discovered the time with surprise.

Emptied, the big room took on a more melancholy character. It was said that when Tussaud’s had vacated these rooms for its new premises, the entire move had been carried off in a single weekend. Sheeted figures on the floor, when prodded, had proved not to be the mannequins they appeared, but exhausted members of the staff.

“Now go,” Lillian urged her when the stacking was done. “I’ll stay and find the caretaker to lock up.”

So Evangeline went, thinking wistfully of her rooms and her bed and a novel from the Boots circulating library. Out into Baker Street, past the studios of Elliot and Fry, the Court photographers next door, imagining as she always did the great and the good who daily crossed the pavement she was passing over now. Usually she’d have a companion for her journey back to Holborn, Lillian or a lady whose husband worked in the advertising office at the Daily Mirror building and supported their cause. But in the lady’s absence, tonight Evangeline walked out alone.

There was some traffic on Baker Street, much diminished at this hour. So much had changed in the few short years since she’d come to London. Most of the hansoms were disappearing, supplanted by motor taxis. Horse wagons were still used for deliveries, but fewer of those as the months went by. Where would all the animals go? Wherever they went when their usefulness was done, she supposed, only not to be replaced. Theirs would not be a happy fate. Grace Eccles couldn’t take them all. It would be the tanner’s knife and the bone merchant’s cauldron, rather than grazing out their days in a field.

And in a moment that struck her as both absurd and sincere, God grant them Grace, she thought.

It was then that she heard a man’s voice call out, “There’s one of them.”

TWENTY-FIVE

After a long wait for his train in Walton Station, Sebastian walked home from Waterloo. There were no messages at the pie stand, but he stopped and exchanged a few words with a couple of cabmen. By now Sebastian was a familiar enough figure to have earned himself a nickname; to the cabbies he was the Bedlam Detective.

Walking on in the late-evening darkness, he thought about trick films and puppets. Something had been said about the tinker having puppets. About how children would bring him rags, and he’d make the puppets dance for them.

But a trick film? That seemed like the least likely explanation of all.

Frances was sitting before the fire, her clenched hand raised to touch her lips, gazing into the flames. The room smelled of coal smoke, along with the ever-present smell of moldering wallpaper that hung around the suite of apartments. She didn’t seem aware of him at first. He stopped to look at her; and in the second or more before she registered his presence, he had the sense that her innermost thoughts would be within his reach, if he were only to ask.

But then she looked at him; and when their eyes met he smiled briefly and found some reason to look away as he spoke to her, much as he always did.

“Where’s Robert?” he said.

“In his room,” she said, “reading the book you gave him.” And then she returned her gaze to the flames.

Robert said, “I can’t do what you asked for.”

“That’s all right,” Sebastian said. “I know it was difficult.”

“It’s not a matter of being difficult,” his son said. “You asked the wrong question.”

“Did I,” Sebastian said.

Usually as tidy as a bug collector’s cupboard, Robert’s room was in some disarray. But it was disarray with a purpose, as Sebastian could see. Spread out across the bed were a dozen or more of his magazines, arranged in some kind of significant order. Some lay open, others had pages marked with slips of paper. There were books close to hand as well, and he had a notebook in which he’d been writing. Sir Owain’s memoir carried even more annotation slips. By the looks of it, Robert was still only halfway through.

Sebastian said, “And what question should I have asked?”

“It’s not a matter of where truth ends and fantasy begins,” Robert said. “You should have said where fact ends and fantasy begins. If that’s what you wanted to know.”

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

“No, it’s not. Mother’s like a spring flower. That’s not strictly a fact. But it is true.”