Dead Ringer (14 page)

‘And when Mr Allcock was seen by you naked with Lady Plum … just how would you describe him?’

‘He was rising to the occasion, m’lud and living up to his name!’

The bellowing laughter disturbed Bulstrode; the solicitor swallowed, blinked and opened his eyes slowly, looking around him with an owlish expression, at a loss as to his whereabouts. I would have liked to question Hilliard more but now Bulstrode was awake I had other objectives to achieve. I nodded to Hilliard and took Bulstrode by the arm, dragging him upright from his seat.

‘Time to go,’ I said.

Hilliard was still sitting there, staring mournfully at his gin in the sudden depression of a drunk, when I steered Bulstrode from the noise, fumes and stench of the Garrick’s Head to a cabman waiting under the hissing gas lamps.

In the end, the evening proved to be a successful one. I took Bulstrode back to his lodgings and entered the lounge of the
small private hotel with him, for a late night drink to round off the evening. The solicitor was now more awake, but still
inebriated
: he kept expressing his gratitude for my providing an evening of such ‘royal entertainment’, as he put it; so grateful, in fact, that he cheerfully signed, with a drunken flourish, the paper I pushed in front of him. But it meant that I was late to bed myself, and with an aching head.

As a result I was not best pleased to be woken by a pounding at the door of my chambers at seven the next morning.

It was Ben Gully.

Still in my nightshirt, I let him in. ‘Confound you, is this necessary?’ I groaned.

‘I thought you’d like to know as soon as possible,’ Ben Gully replied coolly, standing slouched in the doorway.

‘Know what, damn you…?’ I muttered in a sullen tone, holding my head, and pouring myself a glass of water to counter the raging thirst I was suffering from.

‘Can you come with me?’

‘Now? Impossible,’ I replied sharply. I took a long draught of water. ‘I’m due at Old Court at eleven, and then I’ve got an
indecent
exposure in the Marylebone Police Office this afternoon. But in any case, come where, dammit?’

Ben Gully pushed his left hand into the voluminous pocket of his greatcoat. He drew forth a watch and displayed it to me. ‘I’ve been doing the rounds. Putting the word out. There’s a receiver I know, fences all kinds of goods … name of Strauss. He owes me favours. I got this watch by way of him, in an
indirect
fashion. Came through his hands, to an acquaintance of mine.’

‘So?’

Ben Gully snapped open the back of the hunter and showed me the inscription engraved inside the case. I peered at it, eyes still bleared with drink and foggy with disturbed sleep. ‘What’s it say?’ I asked irritably.

Ben Gully turned the watch so I could see the markings more clearly. ‘There’s a name inscribed there,’ he said quietly.

He paused. ‘Joseph Bartle.’

W
HEN MY HEAD
had cleared somewhat, we had a
discussion
, Gully and I, but arrived at no firm conclusions. We agreed that the watch was something a man would be reluctant to be parted from. It had landed up in the hands of a moneylender called Rossetti some time after he had acquired it from Strauss, some time after its owner would seem to have disappeared.

Ben Gully was suggesting we should meet the fence who had passed it to the moneylender.

‘If I can root him out, that is. He’s a bit slippery, if you know what I mean.’

But I had my court appearances to deal with so I left him to pursue that opportunity while I went on with what other
business
lay to hand. I needed to get to court, to set about earning a few crusts to relieve the distress of my creditors. There were attendances at Old Court, Marylebone Police Court, and I also had a guinea brief to attend to at the Thames Police Court. As far as I was concerned, Strauss would have to wait.

So after Gully left, I scurried about on my professional business. It was late afternoon before I set out for the Thames Police Court.

It led to a distressing experience that took my mind off the
Running Rein
business for a while.

I suppose I ought to admit to you, even though you’re my stepson, that I’ve always been partial to widows.

It was Garibaldi himself who gave me a piece of very sound advice. You didn’t know I was with Garibaldi that summer of ‘60, when he made his advance on Rome to establish the Italian Republic? Oh, yes, I was with him. Exciting times. Great days. A great man. A great patriot. But also a man who had known many women. And if I may say so, a personal friend.

I remember I was there with Guiseppe that day, at the camp in Salerno, a brace of pistols stuck in the leather belt around my waist, and a red scarf around my neck … there was a
photographer
from the
Illustrated London News
present to preserve the moment for posterity. We were striking camp, making ready to proceed in great triumph up to Naples to secure the liberation of Italy.

We had a number of political discussions, Garibaldi and I (because in fact I was there acting under commission as a secret agent for Lord Palmerston, who was Prime Minister at that time). But Garibaldi also gave me the benefit of his views about women, along with sound advice. We were seated together in his railway carriage steaming north – his triumphal ‘march’ on Rome was done by steam train, you know – and I was telling him about my serious financial difficulties since becoming MP for Marylebone. I can remember his considered, confidential tone as he gave me his advice.

‘My dear James,’ he said, fixing his glowing dark eyes upon me and fingering his bushy beard, ‘at your time of life, with all the troubles surrounding you, you should be looking for a widow, a lady of means, a lodging lady perhaps. You should marry her, against the possibility of a rainy day.’

Back in England it was a comment I repeated to Charlie Dickens, and of course, like the plagiaristic weasel he was he used it as a thought of his own when he libelled me in
A Tale of Two Cities
.

But it was certainly sound advice from Guiseppe Garibaldi and I took it, later in ’61, when my professional bubble finally
burst. That’s right, my first wife, Marianne, she was a widow – just like your own mother, of course.

But where was I? Ah, yes, the point I want to make is that women are different, one from another – some women, widows or not, can be cunning as snakes; others can be weak as
dishwater
.

Take my first wife, Marianne. She was a great philosopher. She’d philosophized her first husband – none other than Crosier Hilliard – into a state of
delirium tremens
, which killed him. She thought widowhood was an impertinence of Fate, and further considered that by marrying me she could make me change my profligate ways. And as for Garibaldi’s advice, well, it was already raining when I led Marianne to the altar after my
disbarment
at the Inner Temple. It wasn’t a church wedding: the ceremony was held in the office of the British Ambassador in Paris. That’s where the knot was tied.

Unfortunately, the rainy days didn’t stop during the next eighteen months of marital disharmony, either. It was a relief when the court in the Bronx decided she had bitten off more than she could chew, and freed me.

That’s how I came to be free to marry your mother.

But really it was all Marianne’s fault. She just didn’t know how to handle me.

But I digress again. An aged barrister, hey? What was the point I was alluding to? Ah, yes. Women are different. One will proceed with exaggerated caution, another will react
precipitately
from despair. I mean, they take things like love affairs, or pregnancy, so
seriously
. It came home to me vividly that day in the summer of ’44, when I went by boat up-river, to the hearing at the Thames Magistrates Court, still mulling over Gully’s discovery of Bartle’s watch, still smarting from the comments that were circulating about the farce of the
Running Rein
case….

As usual, the Thames that afternoon was soiled and darkened with livid false tints and packed with all kinds of river craft:
barges, wherries, coasters and watermen’s boats. Patches of fog, dense and dirty-yellow, were collecting along the river banks and the watery sun gleamed only fitfully through the gloom. I waited for
The Cricket
steamboat at the Temple Gardens. That was the paddle steamer that blew up later in 1847, there were some fatalities, and there was quite a public outcry about it. However, off I went that day, joined the scrambling crowd at the pier, and stood on the Temple steps as the boat edged cautiously in from the crowded river to the landing.

There was a lot of bad feeling around on the river at that time. One of the steamboats had recently run down a waterman in a skiff and killed him. The master was found guilty of manslaughter and got a four-month gaol sentence … but there was always some kind of trouble between the watermen and the steamboat owners: both sides used to demolish the piers used by the opposition in their competitive struggle for trade.

Anyway, I waited at the steps above the landing in good time for the steamboat: they had a nasty habit, you know, of pulling away at full speed from the embarkation pier before everyone was on board, but I was near the head of the queue. Off we went with a great churning of the river water, the engine chugging away manfully against a background of the slapping sound of the paddles in the grey, greasy water. Groups of black-clad office workers crowded the deck, like attendants at a mourning. The sight did not improve my black mood.

As for the hearing at the Thames Police Court, I needn’t tell you about the proceedings that occurred there that day: they were insignificant. I don’t even remember much about them except that the magistrate was a fat pork butcher who sweated profusely on the bench, it being his first hearing. But whatever the case was, it came to an abrupt end when someone came rushing into the courtroom in quite a hurry, seized some of his companions, and rushed out. The pork butcher bellowed in indignation, found his gavel and slammed it on the desk for
order but it was too late: the rumour quickly spread throughout the dark little room. There had been an accident on the river. And as the courtroom rapidly cleared the magistrate decided to adjourn the hearing when the usher whispered in his ear.

A moment later the pork butcher was scurrying outside as fast as his fat little legs could take him. I recall picking up my papers wearily, aware that my paltry guinea would have to be worked for some other time, and followed the crowd outside.

I made my way down to the crowded, heaving embarkation dock and realized that a crowd had gathered there to witness what really was an incident of note. Through the rising yellow mist I could just make out where a decorated barge of some considerable size had collided with the piers of Westminster Bridge. There was a deal of distant shouting, much coming and going of wherries and steamboats, and a procession of wooden skiffs busy disembarking bewigged gentlemen from the barge: it was clear that they were persons of consequence from the crowd that had gathered on the bridge itself, and the waving of hats and cheering as notable individuals were rescued.

At the Devonshire Club that evening I learned that the
accident
had occurred to the
City Barge
carrying the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs, the Aldermen and the Secondaries (among whom was my father). The barge had collided with one of the piers. All had been thrown from their seats in the collision with the mace, decanters and glasses from the hospitality tables thrown down and rolling about on the floor. At a distance, I watched the excited scene for a while but was soon bored by it: rather, I became somewhat irritated, because with all the roiling about on the river, and the ferrying of the Lord Mayor’s party to the shore, and the halloing from the massed boats with cheering
spectators
, there would be little chance of my obtaining even a skiff to take me back to the Temple within the next hour or so.

Moreover, I found myself standing next to another barrister of my acquaintance … Ballantine, who later wrote so disparagingly
of me in his memoirs. I always did dislike the man, who had obtained his position in the profession as a result of his father’s influence as a Police Court magistrate. He was a long-nosed, slimy enough fellow, and on this occasion seemed inclined to buttonhole me and engage me in conversation. Perhaps about my humiliation before Baron Alderson or my brush with the Benchers. This did not appeal to me. Accordingly I decided to forgo the pleasure of his company on the next available boat and turned to walk along the bank, to make my way back to the street where I might find myself a hansom cab.

I left the dock and proceeded to make my way along the
riverside
. This entailed scrambling over scattered river detritus, mud flats and decaying timbers at first, until I reached the narrow, dusty pathway that traversed the riverside. The track was fronted by rank, head-high weeds behind which decaying hovels lurched dangerously on the steep banks that led up to the main thoroughfares.

My boots were filthy. I was about to turn into one of the cobbled, narrow, rubbish-littered streets that led up to the highway, where I might find a cab, when my attention was distracted by a small group that had clustered about one of the ancient jetties that lay above the mudflats. I hesitated, curious.

At first I had thought that they were watching the shouting crowds on the bridge where the mayoral barge had suffered its collision, but soon realized there was more
purpose
to this group. A wherry had been drawn up at the edge of the mudflat; several brawny workmen were dragging at what seemed to be a kind of net, which resisted, surging heavily in the filthy water. They were paying no attention to the events at the bridge, and they were supervised by a man in a blue frock coat and tall,
black-varnished
hat. The supervisor’s hands were locked behind his back; he was staring at the thing the men were drawing with difficulty from the river, and he bore an air of square-
shouldered
, imposing authority. Curiosity got the better of me and I
walked towards the jetty, until I was standing just behind the man in the blue frock coat.

My steps echoed on the ancient, rickety timbers of the jetty. At the sound of my approach the man in the varnished hat turned slowly. He was a lean-featured fellow apart from his mastiff jowls; he wore reddish-hued side whiskers, and his small, deep set eyes were a startling blue. He was a little above average height, narrow in the hips, but the hands locked behind his back were large and meaty. His sharp glance met mine and I stopped: he observed me for several seconds, as though appraising me, and then nodded slightly, raised a hand to touch his hat. The carefully polished gilt buttons on his coat glittered in the watery afternoon sunshine. I did not know him, but I felt I caught a glimpse of recognition in his sharp glance as he looked at me. A moment later the suspicion was confirmed.

‘Mr James, is it not?’

I was surprised. ‘You have the advantage of me, sir.’

He smiled. His teeth were yellow-stained, wolfish. ‘Inspector Redfern. I have seen you on occasions at the Thames Police Court, and once at the Old Bailey, sir.’

A policeman, evidenced by his uniform coat and hat; I had been blind not to have realized it. I stepped closer to the officer, peered past him to the men grunting and heaving at the jetty’s edge. ‘So what’s happening here?’

Inspector Redfern glanced back to the workmen then turned back, observed me calmly. ‘An unfortunate, Mr James. We come across many such. This time, it seems, a young woman.’

I stood there just behind him for several minutes and watched in horrified fascination as the men succeeded finally in dragging the thing caught up in the net out of the muddy water. The clothing was sodden, the grey cloak heavy and stained, hair plastered to the skull, features swollen as a result of the woman’s immersion. There was an ugly sucking sound as the corpse was lifted over the gunwale of the skiff, then a deep trail
was marked in the mud as the skiff was dragged across the mudflat towards the jetty. Inspector Redfern seemed unmoved by the activity, standing with his hands once more locked behind his back, almost indifferent to the scene, but it was the first time I had seen a corpse recovered from the river and I remained just behind the police inspector’s shoulder, horrified, nauseous, yet fascinated.

Over his shoulder, Inspector Redfern commented after a thoughtful pause, ‘There was thirteen children went overboard from a steamboat last year: three of them died this way. Not much chance of survival if they inhales the filthy water. Bound to be accidents, of course.’ He nodded casually in the direction of Westminster Bridge, still packed with spectators observing the hapless Lord Mayor’s barge. ‘We calculate there’s two hundred steamers constantly navigatin’ the Thames apart from the three hundred or so sailing vessels carrying coal from Newcastle and the barges bringing grain and building stone up from Kent. And with the Diamond Company now taking wives and families down to Gravesend or Ramsgate for the summer, bound to be even more accidents, I reckon.’