Chapter 7
Hannah darted forward, as though she’d engage the man in fisticuffs, but I stepped in her way.
“You knew Mr. Banks?” I asked the man.
“I did, aye. What of it? Ye never said who ye were.” He looked us up and down. “Temperance?”
“Of course not,” I said before Hannah could decide to switch us to the role of ladies battling the evils of drink. “We came to see if we could do anything for the family of poor Mr. Banks. Did he have any?”
The man shrugged. “Naw. He didn’t have no one. I’m closest thing he had to a friend, which is why I know you was never mates with him.”
“No,” I said, deciding to take a chance. “But he knew a friend of mine, or at least went to speak to him today.”
“You mean McAdam?”
“You know Mr. McAdam?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I heard Hannah shift restlessly behind me.
“I don’t know ’im,” the man answered me. “But I know Banks went to meet ’im. Was going on about ’im, all excited like. Did McAdam do for ’im? If so, I’ll make him sorry for it. Banks weren’t a bad bloke. Did me a good turn now and then.”
“Mr. McAdam did not hurt him, I promise you,” I said. “He was anxious to learn what Mr. Banks had to tell him.” I peered at the man, not very hopeful. “You don’t happen to know what it was, do you?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I tell you, missus?”
“Because it might be very important.”
I waited expectantly. I’d learned that being forthright with people without appearing to threaten them often convinced them to go along with what I wished. It worked with recalcitrant footmen and kitchen maids, anyway.
The man looked me up and down again, and I saw him decide that Hannah and I were harmless. “He knew McAdam from the old days, or thought he did,” the man said. “Grimes put me through it when Banks wanted to talk to McAdam. Who was Banks, and what was he up to? Wanted to know all about him.”
“Ah, you know Mr. Grimes, then,” I said, nodding sagely.
“Everyone in these parts knows Grimes. Why does a prim and proper miss like you know him?”
“He is something of a friend of mine,” I said truthfully.
The man’s eyes filled with a little more respect, though I might have imagined it. His face was so craggy and pockmarked it was difficult to read his expression.
“If you say so, missus. You can call me Ramsay. Everyone does.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ramsay. I am Mrs. Holloway, if you need to ask Mr. Grimes if I’m not lying. Now, please tell me what Mr. Banks wanted to relay to Mr. McAdam.”
Ramsay settled his shoulder against the doorframe. I realized his position trapped us in the room, but I pretended this did not worry me.
“Banks knew McAdam from before he shipped out to Crimea and came back a broken man, poor sod.”
The Crimean War against Russia had begun in 1853, if I remembered aright, the year before Mr. Banks had earned the medal. Thirty years ago, Daniel would have been a very small boy.
“Did Mr. Banks mention Mr. McAdam’s family?” I asked.
Ramsay hesitated, and Hannah took an impatient step forward. “There might be a coin or two in it for you,” she said, slipping a hand into her pocket.
Ramsay’s expression turned scornful—that, at least, was easy to read. “Don’t want your money. She’s respectable.” He gestured at me. “You ain’t.”
“Well, I never—” Hannah began, but she’d already betrayed that she was not a quiet, innocuous woman when Ramsay had surprised us.
“Please, Mr. Ramsay.” I didn’t have to strive very hard to sound desperate. “It would be so helpful. I promise never to reveal where this information came from.” I’d have to tell Daniel, of course, but I meant I wouldn’t bleat it to Inspectors McGregor or Scott.
Ramsay shook his head. “Banks didn’t know nothing about McAdam’s family, as far as I could tell. Not his proper family, anyway. He said the same woman who took him in also took in McAdam when he were a nipper. All orphans together. Rough-and-tumble, Banks said, but claimed he were happy there.”
I listened hungrily, if I had to hide disappointment that he didn’t have the names of Daniel’s true father and mother at the ready. Daniel had never mentioned a woman who’d taken him in, his memories beginning when he was foraging on the streets of South London, so he’d told me.
“Who was this woman?” I asked. “Where does she live? We can speak to her.”
Again, Ramsay shook his head. “She’s long dead, household broken up. It’s why Banks joined the army, more fool he. Lived out Bethnal Green way. Nowhere you need to be going, missus.”
I wasn’t to be deterred. “Did Mr. Banks tell you the woman’s name?”
Ramsay regarded me with impatience. I’d subdued him temporarily by mentioning Mr. Grimes, but my insistent questions were starting to annoy him, I could see.
“He did. No, don’t offer me coin again,” Ramsay said severely to Hannah. “It was Kerr. Mrs. Kerr. Short and easy to remember. Banks said she weren’t no angel, but she kept them all out of the rain and fed.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ramsay,” I said in genuine gratitude. “You have been most helpful.”
“Never tell anyone I was.” Ramsay’s lips twitched into a near smile. “I have me reputation to keep. You sure McAdam didn’t do for poor old Banks?”
“Very certain. Mr. McAdam has been arrested for it, but I hope to quickly clear his name.”
Mr. Ramsay’s smile faded. “Good luck to you, missus. The peelers do what they want, corrupt lot of fatheads they are. If McAdam’s in the nick, it’s likely they’ll string him up right away instead of bothering to prove whether he did it or not.”
As this was my greatest fear, I could only swallow my anxiousness and try to appear unruffled.
“Even so, I must try.”
Ramsay nodded. “Ah, I see the way of it. You’re his ladybird.”
“Not exactly,” I said coolly, ignoring Hannah’s sudden grin.
“Don’t take offense, missus. He’s a fortunate bloke to have one so loyal. Good luck to him, I say.”
“Thank you.”
It occurred to me, and it must have done to Hannah, that Mr. Ramsay himself might have murdered Mr. Banks.
He knew the man well enough to walk straight into his rooms and to know his history.
He might have quarreled with Mr. Banks over some matter and struck out when they were alone among the warehouses.
Or Mr. Banks might truly have possessed something valuable, and Ramsay had killed him, then returned here to retrieve it.
Hannah would have found any such thing and rapidly, however, or the police would have. The only thing that would fetch any price was the medal in my pocket, and that probably not very much.
I decided not to say any of these things to Mr. Ramsay, and I was happy Hannah kept quiet. Any accusations might turn Ramsay belligerent, and he looked strong enough to make short work of both of us if he chose.
Ramsay seemed to understand he hemmed us in, because he stepped back into the hall, gesturing us out in mock cordiality. I strolled past him as though unworried, nodding him another thanks.
Hannah followed me, fixing Ramsay with a hard stare. Ramsay scowled at her, but he did not impede us.
We clattered back down the stairs, returned the key to Mrs. Duggan, and emerged into the street and a needlelike rain.
Speech was impossible as we hurried around the corner into Southwark Street. Hannah’s umbrella was welcome but not large enough to keep both of us dry, and by tacit agreement, we took shelter in the Blackfriars Bridge railway station.
“You have a cheek,” Hannah said once we were under the station’s awning. She shook out her wet umbrella. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, would it? Charming an obvious villain like Ramsay.”
“I thought it better to be polite to him than rile him up,” I said. “Thank you for not provoking him.”
“I ain’t fool enough to vex a man who probably had six knives in his pockets. Besides, you were doing such a fine job of smarming him, I could only watch admiringly.”
“I was hardly smarming anyone,” I said with indignation. “At least he told us something useful.”
“If he weren’t a liar,” Hannah pointed out.
“True, but I do not see what he would gain by telling us porkies. Though I am sorry to learn that Mr. Banks knew nothing of Daniel’s mum and dad. He will be downhearted to hear that.”
“If Ramsay ain’t a liar,” Hannah repeated with more emphasis. “What’ya going to do now? Run off to Bethnal Green? In this weather, with night coming on? Tell me you have more sense.”
“No, I must go home,” I said in regret. “I will have to leave my search of Bethnal Green for another day. I will go with Daniel on my next afternoon out.”
“You think you can spring him, then?” Hannah sounded as skeptical as Ramsay.
I tamped down my misgivings. “I am certainly going to try. Daniel did not kill Mr. Banks, and Scott will see reason. He is an intelligent man. They’d not have made him acting inspector otherwise.”
“Ooh, it gives me the shivers to hear you talk about the peelers like you’re friends and all.” Hannah exaggerated a shudder. “They ain’t like us, the police. No fellow feeling.”
She was only partly right about that, but I did not argue.
While I’d come to know constables like Caleb Greene and inspectors like McGregor as people with their own worries, I agreed with her that many in the Metropolitan Police could be brutal.
If they decided the person they had hold of was a criminal, whether that was true or not, they’d treat them remorselessly.
We waited without further chatter until the rain began to let up, then we walked swiftly from the train station back across the bridge. Fog swirled around us, becoming inkier as we lost the evening’s light.
When we reached Ludgate Hill, Hannah found a cab, declaring she wasn’t about to walk all the way back to Portobello Road. I offered to share it and pay half the fare, and we both climbed aboard, grateful to be out of the weather.
“Now then,” Hannah began as the hansom rumbled into Fleet Street. “Are you really going to let your daughter out of London without you?”
I tried not to bristle at the abrupt question. “There isn’t much I can do. It is only temporary, and Grace will be better off going with Joanna and Sam.”