Death of a Chimney Sweep (3 page)

Perhaps after supper was over and they all were full of fried eel, toast and hot beer, he would consult Sarah. She had a good, sharp brain and her opinion was always worth listening to.

What was the best thing to do? Common sense told him that it would be wisest to forget the whole matter. Why get himself mixed up with this? It was none of his business, he told himself as he
pummelled and squeezed out the clothes. That’s probably what Sarah would tell him.

But would it be the right thing to do? Or just the coward’s way out?

By the time he returned with his sackful of wet clothes, he had reached his decision.

The fried eel was delicious – meaty and succulent – and the heated beer went very well with it. Alfie mopped the greasy juices from his plate with a piece of bread and took a long
swallow of the beer that had been warming in his pewter mug on the iron grid over the fire.

‘There was murder done today, Sarah,’ he said casually. ‘Joe, the chimney sweeping boy. Some geezer threw the body out of a gig onto the Hungerford Steps. I reckon someone
should be caught for that. I’ve got a few ideas about tracking him down.’

Sarah listened carefully as Alfie went on, her green eyes wide, her face even paler than usual. She interrupted once to ask whether Alfie had seen the face of the man in the gig, nodding when
Alfie said that he was too busy dragging Sammy through the river towards the boat. ‘If I was you, Alfie,’ she said when he had finished, ‘I would have nothing to do with it. You
don’t want to get mixed up in no more murders.’

Alfie thought hard. There was sense in what she said. And then he thought of Joe and a feeling of anger welled up inside him. He rose to his feet decisively. ‘I’m going to pop down
to the police station and have a word with the inspector. Whoever the killer is, he’s not going to get away with murder!’

CHAPTER 5

J
USTICE
FOR
J
OE

‘Friend of yours, was he?’ PC Fairley sounded impatient.

‘Not really. Just knew him to talk to.’ Alfie kept his voice casual. PC Fairley was a new constable, an unpleasant fellow, always keen to twist your words.

‘So he’s nothing to you. Why come bothering me about it, then?’

Alfie said nothing. It was best not to contradict. He was beginning to be sorry that he had come. It couldn’t help Joe.

‘So he was a friend, was he?’

‘Well, sort of,’ said Alfie, trying to seem agreeable.

‘On and off friends?’

Alfie nodded. What was he getting at?

‘So you had a fight, did you?’

‘No,’ said Alfie calmly.

‘You strangled him, is that what you’re telling me? You squeezed his throat until you choked the life out of him. That was the way of it, wasn’t it?’ PC Fairley leant
over his tall desk and thrust his face close to Alfie’s.

‘No, that’s not what I’m telling you.’ Alfie sighed impatiently. Was this man stupid? Or deaf?

‘Tell me again,’ said PC Fairley. ‘Start at the beginning and tell it slowly because this time I’m going to write down every word that you say. That way, none of us can
make any mistakes. Take your time. Remember, once you’ve said something, you can’t go back on it.’

Slowly and carefully, Alfie went through how he and Sammy had found the body of the young chimney sweep by the riverside. He said that he believed Joe worked for Master Grimston, the chimney
sweep, but he did not mention Joe’s terror that morning and he said nothing, either, about Sammy’s assertion that the body was flung from a gig.

Alfie was a little surprised to see how the constable went on writing for quite some time after he had fallen silent. He felt scornful. He had had only a few months of learning to read and write
at the Ragged School, but he could have taken the words down more quickly than that. However, he had enough sense to say nothing, so he just stood there gazing at the fire until the
constable’s quill had stopped scratching the paper.

‘There you are then,’ said PC Fairley, dusting a little sand over the wet ink on the page and then blowing it off. ‘Now, I’m going to put some ink on the pen and then I
want you to make your mark on the end of the page.’ He drew a large X in the air. ‘Can you do that for me?’ he asked in a genial way.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Alfie. He’ll get a shock when he sees that I write
Alfie Sykes
under it, he thought.

‘Right, come around here now, can you reach? Yes, good lad. Just make the mark here.’ The constable put a large, fat finger on a spot at the end of the closely-filled page.

Alfie reached up with the pen and then stopped. It was the sight of the lines and lines of writing that alerted him. Surely he had not said as much as that.

Curiously, he began to read it to himself.

‘I didn’t say that I killed him!’ said Alfie angrily. ‘What are you trying to put on me? I had nothing to do with Joe’s death. I —’

Then the constable’s eyes flickered and he stood up very straight. ‘Oh, good evening, sir . . . Didn’t see you come in, sir.’ He snatched the piece of paper from Alfie,
crumpled it and flung it into the fire.

Alfie swung round and saw a small man with heavy eyebrows and sharp black eyes standing by the door. It was Inspector Denham.

‘Evening, Constable Fairley. Evening, Alfie. What brings you here?’ Alfie and his gang had helped the inspector solve crimes in the past and had been well rewarded for their
efforts.

‘Reporting the finding of a body to Constable Fairley, ’ said Alfie. ‘Found it about an hour ago, just down by the water’s edge by Hungerford Bridge.’ Constable
Fairley, he thought, Constable
Unfairly
, more like. Trying to pull a fast one on me. Trying to make me sign a confession for the murder. But he didn’t bargain on me being able to read
and write! Alfie said nothing, however. The piece of paper had been burnt; there was no evidence now.
Least said, soonest mended
, his grandfather had always told him.

‘A man?’ queried the inspector.

‘A boy – murdered, sir, this boy says.’ PC Fairley put his hand in front of his mouth and said in a loud whisper, ‘Some sort of a fight, I reckon. You know what these
lads are like. Always at each other’s throats.’

‘Come in, Alfie.’ Inspector Denham handed his coat and bowler hat to the police constable and walked into his office, followed by Alfie, who was careful not to look triumphantly at
PC Fairley. Policemen, in Alfie’s experience, could be dangerous. It paid to have them on your side and, if that was not possible, to avoid annoying them.

‘Was that true about a fight?’ asked Inspector Denham once the door was closed.

‘No, sir, it wasn’t true. I found him dead. Down by the river. By Hungerford Stairs.’

‘Long dead?’

‘No, sir, not long – still warm, not stiff nor nothing.’

Inspector Denham looked at Alfie carefully and Alfie looked back, trying not to appear defiant.

‘To tell the truth, sir,’ he blurted out, ‘I’m sorry I came. It won’t do Joe no good.’

‘Joe?’ queried the inspector.

‘Joe is . . . was his name. He was one of the chimney sweeping boys, worked for old Grimston the master chimney sweep.’

‘I see. So if you think it’s murder, who did it?’

‘Don’t know, sir. Can I go now, sir? I’d best be getting back home.’

Inspector Denham said nothing – he was a man of few words, thought Alfie fidgeting, rubbing first one foot, then the other, against the opposite leg. His feet were burning with chilblains
– or perhaps it was frostbite: the water in the River Thames that afternoon had been cold enough to freeze the feet off any man.

‘You said a minute ago that you were sorry you came here,’ said the inspector, after a pause during which Alfie felt that his innermost thoughts were being read by the man behind the
desk. ‘Why did you come?’

Alfie looked at him in a puzzled way. He hadn’t come for a reward; that was sure. No one would care about the death of a chimney sweep boy. There would be no reward for solving the murder
of a poor boy like that. So why had he come?

‘For Joe . . .’ he said hesitantly.

‘The body has come now, sir.’ The sergeant stuck his head around the door after a perfunctory knock.

‘Let’s see. Come on, Alfie.’ Inspector Denham got to his feet and Alfie followed him along the narrow corridor and into the cold, damp room where, under the harsh glare of the
gas lamps, several bodies lay waiting to be identified.

One body looked very small. The inspector paused beside it, drew back the sheet and looked at Alfie, who gulped then nodded silently. That was Joe, in all his dirt, and, yes, he had been
murdered. There could be no other reason for that purple protruding tongue.

‘So you did it for Joe,’ mused Inspector Denham, replacing the sheet over the dead boy’s face. ‘I think I know what you mean, Alfie. You want justice for Joe,
that’s right, isn’t it?’

Alfie nodded again and swallowed hard. If Joe was to have justice then he would have to tell all that he knew. And in that moment he clearly saw the dangers that lay ahead. Out there on the
streets of London was the man who had murdered Joe. A man in a gig, a man who had seen two boys beside the body. A man who must now be wondering whether he had been seen throwing the body out
towards the river. If Alfie told the police about the man in the gig, it was more likely that the man would be able to track him and Sammy down.

Should he do it?

‘Are you scared?’ asked the inspector, looking at him narrowly. Once again he removed the sheet.

Alfie looked down at the dead boy’s face. He took a long moment before he spoke. ‘No, sir,’ he said loudly. ‘I’m not scared. Takes a lot to scare Alfie Sykes.
I’ll track down that geezer who did this to poor old Joe.’

He was lying, of course. He knew that he had good reason to be scared.

A man who had killed once would not hesitate to kill again.

CHAPTER 6

U
NRAVELLING
A
M
YSTERY

Alfie found it hard to stop thinking about Joe the next day. He wasn’t sure whether Inspector Denham had believed him or not about the gig and what Joe had said. He had
listened and said very little, telling Alfie to come and see him again if he found out any more about the death of the chimney sweeper.

That afternoon, Alfie got ready to take Sammy to the entrance of Covent Garden Theatre.

‘We’ll leave these very torn trousers on you, Sam,’ he said, ‘and that old coat. Let’s give your face a wash, though, and I’ll comb your hair. Sarah made a
good job of washing it last night. What we want is to get all them toffs thinking you’re a good boy just like their children, but you’re very poor. Then they’ll give you some of
their change and they’ll feel good, like it’s Christmas come early!’

‘Let’s take Mutsy too, and then you and he can do a duet,’ suggested Tom. The rich children always laughed when Sammy hit the high note and Mutsy joined in with a high-pitched
wail.

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Alfie. And then he thought of poor Joe again. He would leave Sammy with Tom and go to Hungerford Market to see if any of the stallholders had seen
anything the afternoon of Joe’s death.

‘Yesterday, round about three o’ clock?’ said Lizzie the stallholder. Her stall was on the very edge of Hungerford market, just beside the road going down to
the river. Alfie had chosen her stall for that reason and was happy for a wage of two pence to scrub the potatoes while Lizzie baked and sold them. Lizzie was sharp and might have spotted the gig
– she might even have an idea who drove it.

‘Didn’t see no gig with one man in it, though – not as I can remember, anyways. Why are you asking?’ she demanded sharply.

‘This toff says he’ll give me a penny for holding his horse, goes off for half an hour and then comes back and drives off without a farthing for my trouble,’ lied Alfie
glibly.

‘Nothing you can do about it now,’ said Lizzie with a sigh. ‘One law for the rich and one law for us. That’s life, Alfie.’ Then she paused. ‘No, I tell a
lie,’ she said dramatically. ‘I remember now. I did see a gig, came along ever so fast. Shouted at someone with a cart to get out of his way or he’d see him hauled up in front of
the court.’