The Victoria Vanishes

∨ The Victoria Vanishes ∧

11

Mistaken

The pair were standing at the dog-leg in what Bryant now saw was Whidbourne Street. They looked up at the corner, which was occupied by a Pricecutter Food & Wine store, its yellow and green livery coated with dust, the window plastered with stickers for the unlocking of cell phones and the arrangement of cheap calls to Ethiopian towns. It had clearly been there for a number of years.

May shot his partner a glance. “This couldn’t have been the right corner.”

“But it was, I’m positive,” said Bryant, although he didn’t sound too sure. “She went into an old boozer. Its name, The Victoria Cross, was in gold lettering over the window.”

“Then you must have seen her on another street, before she reached this point.”

“No, it was here, because I remember the way the light from the bar fell on the opposite wall and over the trees above it. The clock tower of St Pancras Station was exactly in that position. She stopped right there” – he pointed to the edge of the pavement – “then crossed the road and went inside.”

“The streets around here look very similar to each other.” May was trying to be kind.

“I’m not losing my mind, John. I remembered thinking that I didn’t know this street. I thought I knew pretty much every route through central London, so I was surprised when I came across one I hadn’t seen before. Have forensics been here?”

“Kershaw and Banbury were ahead of us, but I don’t yet know if they found anything out of the ordinary. If you’re not imagining things, someone in the shop might be able to shed some light on this.”

May led the way inside. An elderly Indian man was virtually invisible behind the counter, buried beneath racks of gum, mints and phone cards. May introduced himself as a police officer.

“They found some old lady in the street last night,” the shopkeeper told them. “Dead, wasn’t she?”

“I’m afraid so. What time did you arrive this morning?”

“I live in Enfield,” said the old man. “This is my son-in-law’s shop. We open at eight.”

“And last night?”

“Close at ten, same as always. It’s nothing to do with us, what goes on over there.”

“What do you mean?”

“The estate. Those boys hang around here at night causing trouble; we don’t know what they get up to. That’s why we’ve got steel shutters. I have to close them every night. I complain to the police but nothing happens. The police never do anything.”

“Mind if we take a look around?” May led his partner away by the arm. “Is it just possible you made a mistake, Arthur?” he asked. “It was late and we’d been drinking for hours.”

“No,” Bryant insisted, but suddenly faltered, looking around at the shelves. “Well, I don’t think so. It occupied the same footprint as this building, with the door in the same place – but…”

“That’s understandable. Areas like this would have been planned by a single architect, so most of the streets have the same-sized building plots. Why don’t we take a walk around the neighbourhood, retrace your steps and see if we can find your pub elsewhere?”

Bryant allowed himself to be led between the racks of jumbo crisps and bottled drinks, but stopped by the front counter. “Do you know a pub around here called The Victoria Cross?” he asked.

The old Indian shook his head without even stopping to think. “Not around here. There’s the Skinner’s Arms, The Boot, and Mabel’s Tavern, but I don’t drink so I wouldn’t know. The pubs are all trouble, boys getting drunk and spraypainting their filth all over the shop.”

Outside, May pointed at Number 6A, the single remaining terraced dwelling that stood at the end of the dog-leg, surveying the street like a sentinel. “What about that house?” he asked. “Maybe the owners saw something.”

They approached the front door and rang a single bell, but there was no answer. May peered through the letter box and saw bills and flyers spread across the hall carpet. “Looks like they’ve been away for some time.”

“All the lights were off,” Bryant recalled.

“All right, forget the name of the pub,” May told his partner, “you might have got that wrong. Just concentrate on finding a place that looks like the one Mrs Wynley entered.”

The pair followed a rough ziggurat back along Bryant’s route, passing half a dozen public houses on the way, but none of them seemed entirely right. It was as if parts of them had been incorporated into a single phantom composite.

“I’m not going mad,” said Bryant anxiously. “I saw her go into the saloon bar and get served by the barman.”

“Wait, you sure it was the saloon? Arthur, pubs haven’t been divided into public and saloon bars for years.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. It was old-world, not messed about with. No beeping fruit machines.”

“Can’t you give me more descriptive detail than that?”

“Yes – no, I mean, perhaps I was a little drunk.” He rubbed his forehead, trying to recall the exact sequence of events. “I don’t remember as clearly as I thought. I’ll have to sit and think.”

“Did it smell different, this alternative space-time continuum you ventured into?”

“Why should it smell different?”

“You know, Victorian smells. Horse dung, tobacco, sewage, hops.”

“I don’t know, I can’t remember. I don’t suppose Victorian London smelled any worse than the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street does during the present day.”

May didn’t mention it, but he was reminded that hallucinations could often be accompanied by sharp changes in one’s sense of smell. Savoury odours of leather and burning were common. “Are you still taking your medication?”

“You mean have drink and drugs addled my brain, causing it to slip into the febrile desuetude of Alzheimer’s? No, they have not and it has not, thank you so much.”

“Then let’s go back to the unit and see what else we can uncover.”

♦

At the PCU, John May’s granddaughter came in and set several pages before them. “There are eight public houses named after Queen Victoria in London,” she explained, “plus The Victoria Park in Hackney, the Victoria & Albert in Marylebone and the Victoria Stakes in Muswell Hill. The nearest Victoria to Bloomsbury is just over the road, off Mornington Crescent. Actually, I think I’ve been there with you.”

“There you are, you see? You’ve muddled the memory of another pub with the one you passed,” said May soothingly.

“I did not muddle them!” Bryant all but shouted. “Good God, do you think I can’t tell the difference between Mornington Crescent and Bloomsbury? She went into the pub on that corner, and then left and died or was killed on the street outside.”

“We could settle this if you knew the exact time you passed each other,” said May. “We know she was alive when you saw her, so if Kershaw can pinpoint the time of death we’ll be able to see if there’s a discrepancy.”

“I want an artist,” said Bryant stubbornly. “I need someone who can draw what I saw.”

“I can draw,” April volunteered. It had been one of the many talents she had perfected during the flare-up of her agoraphobia, during which time she had rarely left her shuttered apartment in Stoke Newington.

“There are sketch pads and some pens in the evidence room,” said May. “You’ll have to get Renfield to unlock it for you. What else have we got on Carol Wynley’s movements last night?”

“I was about to give you this,” said April. “I’ve put together a timeline from statements volunteered by her partner and work colleagues. Wynley worked at the Swedenborg Society in Bloomsbury, but was meeting up with friends from a former workplace, a charity organisation working with Médecins Sans Frontières. They had drinks in a pub called The Queen’s Larder – ”

Bryant perked up. “I know that watering hole. It was named after Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George the Third. He was being treated for insanity at a doctor’s house in Queen Square. The queen leased the cellar beneath the pub to keep the king’s special foods there.”

“Wynley left The Queen’s Larder sometime after ten – no-one’s been able to pinpoint the exact time – and made her way up to Euston Road, but then she doubled back into Bloomsbury, which suggests a deviation from simply returning home.”

“I told you so,” insisted Bryant. “She had another destination in mind.”

“Then perhaps you made a mistake about the name of the pub,” May suggested.

“We’ll soon see.” Bryant climbed the small stool behind his desk and reached up among his books, pulling down a green linen volume with untrimmed pages. “Here we are, The Secret History of London’s Public Houses.”

“Wait, when was that printed?”

Bryant checked the publisher’s page. “1954. Not one of my more recent acquisitions.” He flicked to the index. “Here you are. Going mad, am I? Look at this.” He turned the book around and held it up with the pages open.

The others found themselves looking at a photograph of a public house built on the corner of Whidbourne Street, Bloomsbury, but they did not seem pleased.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bryant. “I was right after all, wasn’t I? We just overlooked it. Let’s go back and – ”

“Arthur, this can’t be the place,” said May. “This picture was taken two years before the pub was demolished, in 1925. It’s been gone for over three quarters of a century.”