Blackstone and the New World (24 page)

‘And you did that so she could see Jenny?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Jenny had landed herself a cushy little job. It wasn’t in a grand house like this is, but she was comfortable enough. And I wanted her to be an example for Nancy – a reminder of what she could become if she stuck at it.’

Blackstone laughed. ‘So much for the stern and unyielding butler,’ he said. ‘You’re nothing but a pussycat in disguise.’

‘Oh, I can be stern and unyielding when I need to be,’ Boone said seriously. ‘If you don’t believe me, just ask the staff. But when you see a kid like Nancy, you just want to help her.’

‘So what went wrong?’ Blackstone asked.

Boone sighed. ‘I went down to the kitchen one morning about three weeks ago, and she’d simply disappeared.’

‘And why do you think that was?’

‘I don’t know,’ Boone admitted. ‘But if I had to guess, I’d say that one day, when she was out walking with Jenny, she met a man – and that eventually this man persuaded her to run away with him. It happens from time to time – and it nearly always ends badly.’

‘Do you think it’s possible that any of the servants know more than you do?’ Blackstone asked.

‘It’s possible,’ Boone said. ‘Though if they
do
know, they won’t tell
me
.’ He took another sip of his port. ‘But I suppose there’s a chance they might open up to you, an outsider, as long as I promise them that whatever they tell you will never get back to me.’

‘And would you do that?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Why not?’ Boone replied. ‘
I
can’t get Nancy out of whatever trouble she’s landed herself in, but you might just be able to. And from the impression I’ve formed of you, I think that if it’s humanly
possible
for you to help her, you will. Am I wrong about that?’

‘No,’ Blackstone said. ‘You’re not wrong.’

TWENTY

T
he girl’s name was Florence. She had a sallow complexion, thin, pinched features, and narrow, distrustful eyes. She was a scullery maid, as Nancy had been. But it did not take Blackstone long, as he sat across the table from her, to work out that she was the
other
kind of scullery maid that Boone had talked about – the sort who would never get on.

‘Cook told me that you were a friend of Nancy Greene’s, Florence,’ Blackstone said. ‘Is that right?’

The girl sniffed. ‘I suppose I was. She used to help me with my work, when I was fallin’ behind.’

Blackstone smiled at her, though he didn’t find it easy. ‘And I suppose that you helped her with
her
work, when
she
was falling behind?’ he asked.

‘Nancy never fell behind,’ Florence said resentfully. ‘Nancy always managed to finish her work in
plenty
of time.’

‘And while you were working side-by-side, did you talk to each other?’ Blackstone asked.

Florence sniffed again. ‘Not allowed to talk when we’re working. It’s one of the rules.’

‘But I’ll wager the pair of you broke that rule now and again, didn’t you?’ Blackstone cajoled.

‘Maybe.’

‘And when that happened, did Nancy tell you things?’

‘Tell me things? Like what?’

‘Like, for example, what she did when she went out for a walk with her friend, Jenny, who she’d known at the orphanage?’

Florence’s eyes narrowed even further, as if she was expecting some kind of trap.

‘They didn’t do nothin’,’ she said. ‘They walked. What else can you do, when you ain’t got no money?’

‘You did hear Mr Boone say that whatever you told me wouldn’t get back to him, didn’t you?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Yes.’

‘So you can speak freely. You can tell me anything that Nancy told you. I promise that it won’t hurt her. It may even be to her advantage. Do you understand that?’

Florence looked down at the table. ‘Yes.’

‘So let me ask you again. What did Nancy do when she was out walking? Did she meet anybody?’

‘Might have done.’

‘Don’t you
want
to help her?’ Blackstone asked, exasperated.

Florence looked up.

‘No,’ she said, with a sudden fierceness entering her voice. ‘Why
should
I want to help her? She’s abandoned me, ain’t she? She’s out there livin’ high on the hog, an’ I’m still stuck here. An’ it’s even worse for me now than it used to be, because she ain’t here to give me a hand.’

‘So you don’t want to help her,’ Blackstone said resignedly. ‘But maybe you’d like to help yourself.’

‘How do you mean?’

Blackstone took two dollar bills and one $5 dollar bill – Meade’s money – out of his pocket, and laid them flat on the table. Florence gazed down at them, almost mesmerized, and licked her lips.

‘
Did
Nancy meet someone when she was out walking with Jenny?’ Blackstone asked.

Florence nodded. ‘Yeah, a guy called Eddie.’

‘Eddie what?’

‘Don’t know,’ Florence said, as her hand began to creep slowly across the table towards the dollar bills.

Blackstone slammed his right hand down hard, over the money.

‘Eddie what?’ he repeated.

‘Eddie Toscanini,’ Florence said sulkily.

Blackstone lifted his right hand slightly, extracted one of the dollar bills with his left, and passed it across the table to Florence.

‘And she saw him more than once, didn’t she?’ he asked.

‘After the first time they met, it was every time that her and her friend went out.’

‘And when she eventually ran away, it was this Eddie Toscanini she ran away with, was it?’

‘Yes.’

Blackstone took out the second dollar, and dangled it in the air.

‘Where did they run away
to
?’

‘She told me that he lives on Little Water Street. I think that’s near the Bowery.’

Blackstone released his hold on the second dollar bill, and the girl caught it in mid-air.

‘And what does he do, this Eddie Toscanini?’ Blackstone asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What’s his job?’

‘No idea,’ Florence said. ‘Listen, mister, I’ve told you all I know. Can I have the rest of the money?’

‘No, you can’t – because you’re still holding something back,’ Blackstone said sternly.

‘I ain’t. I promise I ain’t.’

‘You said that Nancy was living high on the hog, didn’t you?’

‘That’s was just a manner of speakin’. I don’t
know
anyfink. Anyway, whatever life she’s havin’, it must be better than bein’ here.’

‘You said she was living high on the hog,’ Blackstone repeated. ‘Which must mean that Eddie’s got money, which in turn must mean that he’s got some kind of good job.’

‘Don’t have to mean that at all,’ Florence said stubbornly.

‘All right, have it your own way,’ Blackstone said, picking up the $5 bill and making as if to return it to his pocket.

‘Wait a minute!’ Florence said frantically. ‘I
do
know what Eddie does, but I didn’t want to say in case I got into trouble.’

‘In trouble?’ Blackstone repeated. ‘With Mr Boone?’

‘With Eddie,’ Florence said.

‘I promise you that whatever you tell me, I won’t say it came from you,’ Blackstone said, dangling the $5 bill in the air, just as he had dangled the single one.

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Florence whined.

‘You don’t,’ Blackstone told her. ‘But if you do decide not to trust me, then you’ll never get this money.’

‘Eddie works as a runner for the Five Points Gang,’ Florence said, the words spilling out of her mouth as she reached forward and snatched the $5 bill from Blackstone’s hand.

If there were a prize for being the one place on earth that God had truly forgotten, Five Points would not have been a racing certainty to win, Blackstone thought – but it would certainly have been in with a chance.

The area owed its name to the fact that five streets – Anthony, Orange, Mulberry, Cross and Little Water – all met there, and it was at least as depressing as anything he had ever come across in London.

The houses were historical only in the sense that they were old. They were mostly three and four storey dwellings, which – like drunken men – lurched heavily against each other for support. The roofs had gaps in them, many of the windows were no more than holes in the walls to which ragged blankets had been nailed, and the doors hung crookedly on their hinges.

The streets which ran in front of these houses were no better than the houses themselves. They had been hurriedly constructed of cheap concrete slabs, many of which were broken or missing. In some of the alleys there was no paving at all, but only a compacted dirt floor that would become a river of mud in heavy rains. And everywhere there was garbage – a detritus that even the poverty-ravaged inhabitants no longer had any use for.

Blackstone stood and watched two uniformed policemen who – no doubt for a substantial fee – were escorting a group of middle-class people around the area.

How those respectable people gawped and pointed – as if they were viewing a freak show!

But at least freaks were
paid
for being stared at, Blackstone told himself. At least they got
something
out of their humiliation.

Not so the actual residents of Five Points. All
they
got from their well-dressed visitors was a reminder that somewhere beyond this decay there was a better life to be had – but that it was a life which was not for them.

Blackstone shifted his attention from the visitors to the inhabitants – and especially those who were boys, and aged around fourteen or fifteen. Some of these boys were prowling pointlessly up and down the streets, like bears confined in a cage that was far too small for them. Others loitered on street corners, looking out disinterestedly at a disinterested world.

There were dozens of such boys.

Perhaps even scores of them.

Any one of them could be a member of the six-hundred-strong Five Points Gang – any one of them could be the boy who Herr Schiller had seen gun down Inspector Patrick O’Brien.

And
this
was the place that Nancy had fled to from the van Horne mansion of Fifth Avenue.
This
– according to Florence, the envious scullery maid – was where she was now living high on the hog.

But if she
did
live there, he had certainly not been able to find her during the course of that early evening.

‘Never heard of no Eddie Toscanini,’ lied a youngish man, whose breath reeked equally of whiskey and tooth decay.

‘There ain’t no girl called Nancy livin’ round here,’ an old woman – who was so bent with age and poverty that she was almost doubled-over – mumbled unconvincingly before hobbling off.

But the youngish man and the old woman had at least
spoken
to him, Blackstone thought. They hadn’t just lowered their heads and hurried on without saying a word, as most of the others who he had approached had done.

He did not blame any of the people for their reluctance to talk to him. In fact, he could quite understand why they acted as they had. Because even a man in a shabby suit had untold wealth in the eyes of the residents of Five Points – and that meant that he was not to be trusted.

The sun was starting to set. Soon it would be dark, and in Five Points it would darker than in most of the city, because street lighting seemed to be one more thing that the area was not deemed worthy of.

The darker it got, the more dangerous this place would become, he told himself – and while he was not afraid of danger, he had never been a man to recklessly court it.

He would return to Five Points the following day, after he had attended Inspector Patrick O’Brien’s funeral, he decided.

But the next time he came here, he would not be alone. Next time he would bring with him someone who just might be able to turn his fruitless search into a successful one.

TWENTY-ONE

I
t was a little after nine o’clock in the morning, and though the early mist blown up from the river had finally dispersed, a distinct chill still lingered in the air.

In the Calvary Cemetery, Queens, the funeral cortège was making its way slowly towards the chapel. It was led by the hearse, a truly splendid vehicle which was panelled in delicately lacquered wood and pulled by four jet-black horses. The hearse was followed by three private carriages. And behind the carriages were the rest of the mourners, who were making this solemn journey on foot.

Blackstone was at the very back of the cortège –
so
far back, in fact, that he might have been said not to have been part of it all. There were reasons for this. Religion –
any
religion – made him distinctly uncomfortable. Besides, he felt something of a fake even
being
at the funeral of a man he had not even known existed until he was already dead.

He wished that Alex Meade were there instead of him, while he himself manned the observation post outside Mrs de Courcey’s brothel. But when he had suggested that, the sergeant would have none of it.

‘I’m a New York City police officer, and you’re not,’ Meade had said. ‘I’m the one with the shield.’

‘But this isn’t a police operation,’ Blackstone had countered. ‘Not an official one. I don’t need a shield to make sure that O’Shaugnessy’s keeping to his side of the deal.’

‘Anyway, I know what to look out for, and you don’t,’ Meade had said, almost frantically. ‘There are hundreds of ways to smuggle supplies into the brothel. Ways which I’d spot, and you’d miss entirely.’

It was all nonsense, Blackstone had thought.

But he hadn’t argued the point further, because they both knew the
real
reason that Meade didn’t want to go to the cemetery.

Blackstone looked beyond the cortège, to the chapel which lay ahead. It was an impressive and ornate structure, with a cupola at its centre, and a pair of elaborate towers, one each side of the arched doorway. It looked like no Christian building he had ever seen before. Rather, it reminded him of the mosques he had known during his soldiering days in India.