Death of a Chimney Sweep (15 page)

‘If she says a word about me, I’ll see she goes to jail too, even if I have to swing for it,’ growled PC Fairley.

Alfie smiled to himself. It was good to find one of his guesses was right. He had no pity to spare for a man who had strangled an unfortunate little fellow like Joe.

‘I think I have heard enough,’ said Inspector Denham grimly. ‘Constable, take the suspect downstairs. I’ll follow you in a minute.’

‘What will happen to Grimston, inspector?’ asked Alfie when the constable and his prisoner had gone heavily down the stairs.

The inspector gave an impatient sigh. ‘I suppose I’ll have to release him,’ he said, his voice sounding annoyed. ‘If he didn’t have anything to do with Joe’s
death, then I’ve nothing to hold him on.’

‘Isaac?’ queried Alfie.

‘I know what the inquest will say about that,’ grunted the inspector. ‘“Death by misadventure.” That’s what they’ll say. “The lad was
careless.” I sometimes wonder whether those magistrates have a scrap of humanity in them.’

He stumped down the stairs and Alfie followed, leaving sooty footsteps on the red carpet. Couldn’t be helped, he thought, looking at the marks. What did he care if he messed up their
carpet? The owners would get some scullery maid or someone who was paid about ten pounds a year to clean the place up before they came back into it. They’d be furious, anyway, when they found
that they had lost their pictures and perhaps some other valuables from out of the safe. But there was something else on Alfie’s mind so he didn’t waste time thinking about the owners
of Number Five.

‘Sir,’ he said.

‘Yes, Alfie?’ The inspector had the bunch of keys that the constable had taken from PC Fairley’s pocket. He held them up. ‘I didn’t know that he had the keys to
this place. It must have been arranged before he came to Bow Street police station.’ Inspector Denham seemed to feel the need to explain himself, but Alfie had something else on his mind.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘before you let out Grimston, is there anything that can be done for those three boys he keeps in a stable in Devil’s Acre? He’ll be in such a mood
that he might take it out on them. The little fellow, Bert, looks real sick. I’d say he’ll be the next body in the chimney.’

The inspector nodded. ‘I’ll keep Grimston in for another day. I can easily hold him a bit longer for questioning. I’ll have a word with a friend of mine; he’s the master
of Marylebone workhouse – a decent place. I’m sure he’ll oblige me and take the three boys in for a couple of years and teach them a skill – shoemaking or something like
that.’

‘That’s good,’ said Alfie. His own father had made a reasonable living between making new shoes and repairing old ones, before he died of blood poisoning.

‘I’ll keep an eye on Grimston. There is a law against using boys as young as that to climb chimneys. The trouble is that the magistrates just warn them not to do it again and nothing
happens.’ The inspector’s voice was subdued.

‘He probably didn’t murder Isaac,’ said Alfie soothingly. ‘I’d say that it wasn’t murder. I’d say that he died from the smoke or the soot. It’s
not a nice job, sir. Myself, I’ve made up my mind that this is the last time that I’ll ever go up a chimney.’

Alfie was conscious of a flat feeling. He had solved the murder, but there was no feeling of jubilation, no excitement, no instinct to go out and celebrate. This was not an occasion for
festivity. Two very young boys were dead and there was no getting away from that fact.

Inspector Denham seemed to sense what he was thinking. He locked the door behind them and looked down at Alfie. ‘You did what you set out to do,’ he said quietly, ‘and many a
man could not say the same. You got justice for Joe.’

CHAPTER 27

T
HE
F
LEA
C
IRCUS

‘Anyone at home?’

Alfie woke with a start. They had all stayed up very late discussing the murder. When Jack came back from taking Sarah home, they had gone on talking, reliving the funny bits – especially
about Old Grimston and the rats – and eventually just dropped off to sleep one by one.

‘Coming,’ he called. Accompanied by Mutsy, he unbolted the door a moment later and blinked.

There on the doorstep was the sergeant from Bow Street police station. He held an envelope in his hand. ‘Message from Inspector Denham,’ he said.

‘Wants me to bust a gang of bank robbers?’ enquired Alfie cheerfully. ‘Cracksmen, magsmen, snotter-haulers, hoisters, fogle-hunters – Alfie Sykes at his
service.’

‘Now don’t you get cheeky,’ reproved the sergeant. ‘Inspector Denham sent you these – they’re tickets for a show. He was going to bring his own boys but
they’ve all got the measles.’ He held out the envelope and then dug in his pocket. ‘And here’s five shillings for you. Inspector Denham said that you should buy yourself
some sweets and that you would find a use for whatever is left over.’

Alfie’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the five silver coins. He quickly slid them into his pocket and took the envelope from the policeman’s hand. He sent his thanks to the inspector
and politely hoped that his family would soon recover.

‘What are the tickets for?’ asked Tom, coming to join him once the door was closed.

Alfie took the envelope to the light of the small window set high up in the wall of the cellar. ‘Some sort of play or something, I suppose,’ he said as he drew out four tickets.
‘I don’t suppose . . .’ And then he stopped. His eyes widened as he read. ‘A flea circus!’ His exclamation woke up Jack and Sammy.

‘What! Real fleas?’ Jack was puzzled but Sammy had heard some children talking about a circus of fleas.

They were still discussing it when Sarah came in bursting with excitement. She had just got a new job as waitress at the White Horse Inn in Haymarket and had been invited to spend an afternoon
getting to know the place before starting work in two weeks’ time.

‘It’s so lucky that it’s my afternoon off,’ she said, then added, ‘What are you all looking so excited about?’

St Martin’s church bell was sounding one o’clock by the time that they finished telling her the story of Constable Fairley and, of course, about the tickets to the flea circus. They
walked with Sarah as far as the White Horse and then left her to go up towards Leicester Square.

The flea circus did not open until two o’clock but Alfie wanted to take a lot of time to choose sweets. Three of the five shillings had gone into the rent box – it was Alfie’s
dread that one bad week would come when money for the rent could not be found and then they would all be thrown out on the street – and one of the shillings was reserved for a good supper,
but with the last shilling he was determined to buy sweets for the gang. He had never tasted sweets, but had seen rich children sucking them, tossing them into their mouths with expressions of
ecstasy and begging parents to buy them. He had often stood in front of the windows of sweet-shops wondering how they tasted.

The sweet-shop in Leicester Square was thronged with children – well-off children in warm coats, knitted stockings and shining leather boots.

‘One pennyworth each,’ said one parent and others echoed this. Alfie marched up to the counter and casually took the bright silver shilling from his pocket.

‘I want a shilling’s worth of sweets,’ he said loudly and clearly, and saw with satisfaction how these well-dressed children stared at him. They couldn’t believe their
ears – these four ragged boys were each having three times as many sweets as they were. ‘All right if we look around a bit and make up our minds?’ he added.

That told them, thought Alfie with satisfaction as he marched down the line of shelves reading the names aloud for Sammy.

Tom, he noticed, had stayed at the counter, unable to wait. He knew how he felt – his own mouth was watering, but he was determined to make a good choice.

‘They’re Bulls’ Eyes,’ said the shopkeeper as Tom pointed towards some round white and black sweets. ‘Pennyworth? There you are. And the humbugs – another
pennyworth. Toffees? Fizz balls?’ Rapidly he twisted some paper into a cone shape, tipped in the sweets and handed it to Tom.

The smell coming from the jars and boxes was glorious. Alfie tried to think how to describe the sweets to Sammy. ‘The next ones are called bootlaces . . . Peggy legs are long – about
the length of your hand and about as thick as two of your fingers’

‘Let him try a little bit,’ said the shop man, his eye on the shilling in Alfie’s hand. Quickly he sliced one of the long, black bootlaces into four and gave a piece to each
boy. ‘That’s liquorice, that is.’

Alfie made a face and looked at Sammy.

‘Don’t like it,’ said Sammy decisively. ‘I’ll take a peggy leg, that’ll last a good long time if it’s as big as you say and I’ll have two pence
worth of Turkish Delight. I like the sound of that name. You get something different, Alfie, and then we can share.’

The poster outside the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square was bigger than a man. Alfie stopped and read the words done in huge letters of red on a yellow background.

An hour passed as quickly as five minutes while Alfie and the others wandered here and there looking at all the wonders. A few people stared at the four ragged boys with surprise, but Alfie
didn’t care. His money was as good as theirs, he thought.

‘You look like you’ve plenty of fleas,’ said a well-dressed young gentleman, staring at Alfie in a challenging way. He was about the same age as Alfie, but was wearing a black
silk waistcoat, with a gold watch prominently displayed, and a starched shirt, with the pointed collar standing upright under his chin.

‘None today, sorry,’ said Alfie briskly. ‘All promised to the Russians. Come back next week and I’ll see what I can do for you.’

He was pleased to hear the laugh that burst out from the other children. The boy with the black silk waistcoat didn’t seem popular with any of them. One girl in particular seemed to find
the joke very funny. Alfie winked at Tom, nudged Sammy and went on calmly explaining to his brother about how the flea was towing the carriage by means of a fine gold wire attached to one hind
leg.

‘Made by a Swiss clockmaker to show off his skill, I understand,’ said one well-dressed toff to another, and the other recited at the top of his voice. ‘Great fleas have little
fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.’

‘Oh, Papa,’ said his daughter, the girl who had laughed so uproariously at Alfie’s joke. She was nicely dressed in a coat of scarlet wool and a white fur hat. ‘Parents
are so embarrassing, aren’t they?’ she said to Alfie, who wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He would have thought that having a rich parent like that gentleman smoking the cigar
would be a very useful thing. He winked at her and turned back to Sammy.

‘Come on, Beatrice,’ said the man who had recited the poem about the fleas. ‘Time for supper.’

‘I hate supper, don’t you?’ The girl named Beatrice ignored her father and addressed herself to Alfie.

‘Depends on what it is,’ said Alfie. Stale or mouldy bread wasn’t very nice but nothing at all was even worse.

Beatrice made a face. ‘We always have something like semolina, or cold rice pudding, or milk and bread, disgusting messes like that.’

‘Do you?’ Alfie was amazed. It sounded almost as bad as the mouldy bread. ‘Me and my mates are going to have a slap-up supper. Some big fat German sausages, some pork pies
—’

‘What!’ interrupted Beatrice, her blue eyes stretched so widely that they looked enormous. She gave a quick look at her father but he was laughing over a joke with his friend.
‘Papa would say that we would not be able to sleep if we had a meal like that.’

‘Oh, we don’t go to sleep afterwards, do we, lads?’ Alfie gave a laugh at the thought of that. ‘We just sit around a fire and drink hot beer and go to bed when
we’re sleepy. Get up when we like, too.’

‘Beer!’ she breathed, gazing at him with admiration and then followed her father. At the door she turned and waved back at Alfie.

‘You’re so lucky,’ she called.

Alfie waved back and then grinned to himself. He thought of all the times when he was cold, hungry and terrified; the times when there was not a crust to eat, no coal for the fire and no money
in the rent box.

Still, he thought, we have good times as well as bad. And today was one of the best!

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS