A Very Peculiar Plague (8 page)
It bothered him that he couldn’t remember who she was.
Buildings were being constructed all around the viaduct, wherever older houses had been knocked down to make way for the new stretch of road. After passing St Sepulchre’s church, heading west, Hugh Purdy pointed to where the Saracen’s Head Inn had once stood. Skinner Street was also gone, he lamented, as was Haberdashers Court, and Turnagain Lane. A railway station was being erected near the bridge, with a grand hotel attached to it.
‘You wouldn’t recognise this place,’ said Purdy, shaking his head as he surveyed all the hoardings and rubble. ‘I growed up near here, on Katherine Wheel Court, and
that’s
gone, too. Like they put a scythe through Snow Hill.’
The plumber finally stopped in front of a large terrace that was going up on the south side of the viaduct, near St Andrew’s church. It was a tall, handsome building made of fresh-laid bricks and newly carved stone. The front door hadn’t been painted, but all the windows were glazed – including the shop windows downstairs. A load of banisters had been dumped near the main staircase. No one had yet sanded the floors, papered the walls, or installed any fireplace mantels.
Everything inside was coated with a thick layer of plaster dust.
‘Do bogles leave tracks?’ Jem asked Alfred, as Purdy ushered them into the vestibule – where the floor-tiles were a mess of powdery footprints.
‘Not as a rule,’ Alfred replied. ‘But that don’t mean a thing.’ He sniffed the air like a bloodhound as he followed Hugh Purdy into the first room. Here someone had left a mangy broom and a wheelbarrow. The fireplace was just a square hole in the wall. The floor in front of it was covered in footprints, all of them made by hobnail boots.
‘Can’t see no traces here,’ Alfred observed, after hunkering down to peer up the flue. When Purdy asked him what traces he would expect to find if a bogle was in residence, Alfred shrugged and said, ‘Depends on the bogle. Some might leave a stain, or a smell. Most don’t leave nothing at all.’
Jem sneezed. The only things
he
could smell were sawdust and plaster, with a little linseed oil thrown in. It was the same in the next room, and the one after that. As they slowly ascended, past door after door without knobs or architraves, Alfred checked every fireplace in the building – and found nothing in any of them.
‘If there’s a bogle haunting the roof, then it’s staying up near the chimneypots,’ he finally declared. ‘Else I’d be feeling its presence, which I ain’t.’
‘You’d
feel
it?’ said Purdy, with a touch of alarm. ‘How?’
Alfred shrugged. ‘You’d feel it too,’ he replied. ‘Everyone’s mood allus slumps when there’s a bogle about.’ By this time he was kneeling by a fireplace in one of the attic rooms, where the brick walls hadn’t yet been plastered over, and where the huge, heavy roof beams were still exposed. There were several discarded tools on the floor near him. Jem eyed them wistfully, knowing that the hammer had to be worth at least a shilling, and the chisel double that.
But he resisted the urge to pick up even a nail punch, since Alfred would almost certainly tell him to put it down again.
‘If you want to inspect the roof, Mr Bunce, you’ve only to step out onto the slates,’ Hugh Purdy remarked, pointing at a nearby dormer window. It was circular, like a ship’s porthole, and framed a view of the elaborate stone balustrade that ran along the edge of the roof. ‘I’ve put a ladder out there, and can tie a rope around your middle. But you’ll see for yourself, there’s plenty to hold on to . . .’
Alfred rose to his feet. Jem dashed past him and climbed up onto the windowsill. Below it was a wide gutter that separated the balustrade from the sloping roof. To his right, a ladder had been propped against the slates, leading up to the roof’s apex. To his left was a bank of chimneys, practically within touching distance.
The lowering grey clouds seemed almost as close as the chimneys. Jem wondered how long it would be before the rain started, making it too wet to go crawling across a pitched roof.
‘Oh, this ain’t so bad!’ he announced. ‘I seen
much
worse than this!’ While working for Sarah Pickles, he had often broken into houses by lifting roof slates. Sometimes he had even done it in the middle of the night. Climbing onto a balustraded roof in broad daylight, with a ladder to help him and no slimy pigeon droppings to slip him up, seemed like pleasant work in comparison. ‘Let
me
go out,’ he begged Alfred, who had joined him at the window.
But Alfred shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t be safe.’
‘Yes, it would! I’m a good climber!’
‘That ain’t here nor there.’ As Jem opened his mouth to protest, Alfred growled, ‘It’s the bogle as worries me, not the climbing. We don’t want to lay our bait afore we set our trap.’ Having silenced Jem, he turned to the plumber. ‘Where did you last see yer boy? Can you show me the exact spot?’
‘I can,’ said Purdy, dropping his toolbag. Next thing he was out on the roof, tying a length of rope to the balustrade. Once this rope had been attached to Alfred’s waist, the two men began to inch their way along the gutter, while Jem lay across the windowsill, straining to see as much as he could without actually setting foot outside.
‘Last time I saw Billy, I were up there, working,’ Purdy explained, pointing at the roof’s peak. ‘He came down the ladder to fetch more lead. Then his singing stopped, and when I next looked up . . .’ He trailed off with a sigh.
Alfred stiffened. ‘You heard him
singing
?’
‘I did. He had a fine voice.’
The bogler frowned. Jem knew that the bogle would have been drawn to Billy’s voice.
‘So he didn’t go nowhere near that chimney?’ was Alfred’s next question.
‘No.’
‘Where was yer lead?’
‘I left it there. In a box.’ This time Purdy indicated a spot halfway between the ladder and the window. Alfred squinted at this patch of gutter. Then he asked, ‘Are you sure the boy didn’t go back inside?’
‘He had no cause to. I checked the box later, and saw lead enough in it.’
‘But would he have gone to relieve himself?’
Purdy hesitated. At last he said, in a slightly sheepish tone, ‘There’s gutters for that, or we’d be up and down all day.’
Alfred gave a grunt. Jem wanted to inquire about solid waste, but didn’t dare; not after the way he had been scolded for speaking out of turn that morning. Instead, he peered around at the gleaming expanse of grey slate, the half-finished flashing, the narrow chimneypots and the little turrets on the balustrade, wondering where a bogle could possibly have hidden itself. Had the missing apprentice
really
been eaten? It seemed so unlikely – and not just because there were no obvious boltholes on the roof. Jem found it hard to believe that a bogle was lurking nearby, because he didn’t feel gloomy or hopeless. Even under such low, brooding clouds, the roof seemed like a peaceful spot, far removed from the dirt and clamour of the street.
Jem had slept in far worse places.
‘Besides, Billy wouldn’t have gone off without asking,’ Purdy was telling Alfred. ‘And if he did, where is he now? I looked in the cellar. I looked in the coalhole.
He ain’t in this house
, Mr Bunce.’
‘What’s that?’ Alfred said suddenly.
His wandering gaze had snagged on something. Jem leaned even further out of the window, desperate to see what had alarmed the bogler. Only by craning his neck and shading his eyes was he finally able to make out a kind of grating, which was set into the thick wall that divided the house beneath them from the one next to it.
‘That ain’t no downpipe,’ Alfred continued, steadying himself against the balustrade. ‘What’s it for?’
‘Oh, that,’ said Purdy. ‘That’s a ventilation shaft.’
‘A what?’ Alfred didn’t sound any wiser, so the plumber tried to explain.
‘It troubled me too, until I mentioned it to a friend o’ mine. He’s a flusher in the sewers, and told me there’s a great tangle o’ pipes and tunnels built into the viaduct. That there . . .’ Purdy nodded at the grating. ‘. . . is a shaft as lets out sewer gas from under the street.’
‘
Sewer gas?
’ Alfred echoed. He glanced at Jem, who grimaced.
‘There’s one in every party-wall built along here,’ Purdy related. ‘My friend tells me there’s gratings set into the road, as well. And shafts in the lampposts.’ He shook his head admiringly. ‘Ain’t nothing like this viaduct in all the world.’
Jem stared at the spot where Purdy’s box of lead sheets had been positioned. To reach it, Billy would have had to climb down the ladder and turn his back on the grating, which would have been about ten feet away from him.
Having seen a bogle in action, Jem had no trouble imagining what might have happened next. And he shuddered at the thought of it.
Alfred sighed. ‘That there is where yer bogle came from,’ he announced, with a nod at the ventilation shaft. ‘Straight up from the sewers and straight back down again.’ He paused for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘’Tis the worst stroke o’ luck I ever saw. The Board o’ Works should have consulted a Go-Devil man afore building bogle-runs into these here houses.’
‘But – but ain’t that hole too small, Mr Bunce?’ Purdy was gaping at him in disbelief. ‘Why, Billy himself could barely fit through it, let alone the bogle as ate him!’
‘Never think any hole’s too small for a bogle,’ Alfred replied. Then he turned and headed straight towards Jem, planting his feet with great care as he clutched the balustrade.
Jem reached out to help him back inside.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’ Purdy exclaimed. ‘What about the bogle? We have to kill it!’
Alfred shook his head. ‘I can’t. Not up here.’
‘We couldn’t lay down no salt,’ Jem observed, thinking aloud. ‘The roof’s too steep.’ When he saw Alfred’s nod of approval, he felt quite pleased with himself.
‘But it’s got to be killed, Mr Bunce!’ Before Alfred could even respond, Purdy abruptly changed tack. ‘If it lives in the sewers, could we not trap it down there?’ he demanded.
Alfred paused, then shrugged. He was straddling the windowsill. ‘Mebbe.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’ Purdy spoke with energy and purpose. ‘I’ll have a word with my friend Sam Snell, the flusher.
He’ll
get us in. That’s if you don’t object, Mr Bunce?’
‘I’ve worked the sewers before,’ Alfred said wearily.
‘Good.’ Purdy seemed to think that the matter was settled. He didn’t bother to ask Jem how
he
felt about sewers. Neither did Alfred, but that didn’t surprise Jem.
After being underfed and overworked by his last two employers, Jem wasn’t expecting Alfred to treat him like anything but a dumb animal.
Just as long as he don’t truss me up for slaughter
, Jem thought, on his way back downstairs.
One day, he reminded himself, Sarah Pickles was going to pay for doing that.
Hugh Purdy insisted that they all go straight to the Viaduct Tavern. ‘Sam Snell allus drinks a pint there after his morning shift,’ Purdy said. ‘It’s the best place to catch him, this time o’ day.’ He then offered to buy Alfred a brandy while they were waiting for the flusher. ‘I daresay you need one, after your spell on the roof.’
Alfred agreed. So it wasn’t long before he and Jem were sidling into the taproom of the Viaduct, trying to ignore the looming bulk of Newgate Prison nearby. It astonished Jem that people could swill down their gin within yards of such a terrible place. How could they not feel guilty and hunted? It was like having a judge breathing down your neck.
‘Why, if it ain’t Mr Bunce!’ A familiar voice greeted them as they stepped into a room that Jem barely recognised. The crowds had melted away; the gas-lamps were burning very low; the air smelled stale and sour. But Mabel Lillimere was in her usual spot behind the bar, wiping and shelving pint-pots. ‘And Mr Purdy, too!’ she piped up. ‘So you found each other! I
am
glad. Here . . .’ She reached under the bar and produced a bottle of brandy. ‘You’ll not be paying a penny in
this
establishment, Mr Bunce. I’m to tell you as how Mr Watkins just hired his new pot-boy, and won’t be fretting about his safety, thanks to you and your ’prentice.’
Alfred grunted. Jem grinned. Purdy, meanwhile, was peering around the room, which was almost deserted.
‘Is Sam not in yet?’ he asked. ‘I’ll have me usual, by the by.’
‘I ain’t seen Sam, but I expect to,’ the barmaid told him. She had already measured out Alfred’s brandy-and-water. ‘Anything for the lad, Mr Bunce?’
Delighted, Jem opened his mouth to order a quart pot of Dutch bitters. But Alfred spoke first.
‘A dram o’ cider,’ he said, before knocking back his brandy in one gulp.
Jem glowered at him.
‘How did you fare on that roof?’ asked Mabel. She seemed very well informed. As Hugh Purdy explained what had happened, Mabel listened intently. And though her eyes never left his face, she didn’t spill a single drop of the various orders that she was dispensing.
When the plumber finished, she nodded slowly. Then she turned to Alfred.
‘There’s someone needs to consult you, Mr Bunce,’ she declared. ‘He’s sexton at the church across the road.’
‘
Sexton?
’ Jem echoed, almost choking on his cider. His experience with churchmen had never been good. They seemed to do nothing but preach at him – perhaps because he’d spent so much of his life picking pockets.
Though Alfred didn’t say a word, his expression became wary.
‘I can take you over there while Mr Purdy waits for his friend,’ Mabel continued. ‘Mr Froome would be
so
grateful. He’s a lovely man, sir, and mortal worried.’
‘About what?’ Alfred growled.
‘Why, about his missing choirboy!’ Mabel was already untying her apron. Before Alfred could protest, she turned her face to the nearest door and shouted, ‘
Edgar! Where are you? Come here at once!
’ To Purdy she said, ‘Edgar will look after you while I’m gone, since I’ll not be more’n a minute away.’ Then she raised her voice again. ‘
Edgar! You’re to mind the bar, d’you hear?
’
