Death of a Chimney Sweep (6 page)

‘Anyone talk to the sweeping boys, sir?’ he asked.

‘Couldn’t get anything out of them, frightened to death, poor little beggars.’ The inspector gave the fire one last poke and then turned around. ‘I wondered about you,
Alfie. They might talk to you. You might get something out of them.’ He threw the poker down on the hearth with a clatter. ‘Don’t take any risks, though. That Grimston is a nasty
piece of work. The life of a boy wouldn’t mean much to him. He goes through boys the way I go through cigars. Use one up and then get another one.’

Alfie nodded. He agreed with the inspector but thought that he was probably a match for Master Grimston. He could easily trick the old monster. Perhaps he could ask about a job – no, that
wouldn’t work. Alfie knew he was much too big for a chimney sweeping boy.

‘I’ll come up with a story – something about a little brother needing a job . . .’ He grinned at the inspector, but to his surprise the man did not smile back.

‘Be careful, Alfie,’ he said with emphasis. ‘He’s a dangerous man. Don’t let him see what you’re up to. I don’t want to come in one morning and find
your body lying on one of those marble slabs.’

CHAPTER 10

A
D
ANGEROUS
M
AN

Grimston lodged his boys in a place known as Devil’s Acre, behind Westminster Abbey. His chimney sweeping boys slept in a stable there, according to poor Joe, but when
Alfie found the place eventually as the evening was beginning to draw in, he thought that it wasn’t fit for any decent kind of horse.

Hundreds of years ago, this had been a fine house with stables and a courtyard attached, but damp from the river and the action of beetles had rotted and worn down the timber, causing one side
of the house to slip down into the mire beneath it. There was a large pool of stagnant water in front of it and behind was a row of tumbledown stables with crumbling walls and gaping holes in the
roofs. In the worst of these, Grimston housed his chimney sweeping boys.

Alfie waited patiently and eventually a cart turned in through the gap where once there had been a gate. Alfie took from his pocket the large, white handkerchief given to him by Inspector Denham
and flourished it in front of his nose. Tom, standing in front of a doorway opposite, nodded and strolled off.

‘Evening,’ said Alfie, stepping forward when Grimston stopped the cart.

Grimston gave him one uninterested look, then glanced over his shoulder and barked ‘Out!’ at the soot-covered boys in the back of the cart. They climbed out and scuttled like rats
across to the crumbling stable. There were only three of them – Grimston normally kept four boys – and all were even smaller and thinner than Joe.

‘What do you want?’ Grimston did not stir from the cart, but glared down impatiently at Alfie. Obviously neither he nor his horse was going to spend the night in Devil’s
Acre.

‘Heard you might be looking for a chimney sweeping boy?’ Alfie had washed his face and combed his hair. He wore his least ragged clothes and the new boots and tried to look and sound
older, deepening his voice.

‘What of it?’

‘My old man married again,’ said Alfie, who had his story well established in his mind. ‘His new lady had a five-year-old lad. Now she’s croaked it – the fever. My
father don’t want the boy. We’re looking for a good apprenticeship for him – he’s six now – we want someone who could take him off our hands.’

‘Not sure . . . I’m fussy about the boys I take on. Don’t want no one coming around and asking questions and wanting to tell the kid a bedtime story. If I take on a boy,
that’s that. No interference.’

‘Suits us.’ Alfie stretched his mouth in a grin. ‘What happened to your last boy? The soot, was it?’

‘No.’ Grimston had a husky voice and it was hard to make out whether he was puzzled or not. ‘Don’t know what happened to him, to be honest. Picked up dead, he was, lying
next to the river by Hungerford Steps. Beats me what he was doing down there!’

Alfie listened with interest. Did the man sound angry, guilty or just puzzled? From the corner of his eye, he saw Tom leading Sammy by the arm. They positioned themselves on the pavement just
where the cart would pass on the way out of the stable yard. Earlier on they had left Sammy in Westminster Abbey listening to the church choir and organ; Alfie had not wanted Grimston to connect
Sammy with him. The blind boy was well known around Westminster Abbey and someone was bound to know who he was and perhaps connect Alfie with Inspector Denham. On the other hand, only Sammy would
be able to tell whether Grimston’s cart was the vehicle he had heard on the night of the murder.

‘Anyway,’ said Grimston, ‘I’m off now. You get your father to come around with the boy tomorrow – same time, about; same place anyway. Six years old, did you say?
Not too big, is he?’

‘He’s not been used to too much feeding since his mother died.’ Alfie tried a chuckle.

‘Might suit me.’ Grimston shook the reins of the horse and he moved off through the gateway.

Alfie listened intently. A light cart; the wheels moved well and smoothly. He couldn’t hear anything to indicate that one was loose, but then Sammy could hear things that no one else
could. He waited until the cart had disappeared.

He was just about to join Tom and Sammy when a maidservant came out from the Mitre & Dove public house. The heavy bucket she carried dragged one of her shoulders down. As she came through
the archway Alfie sauntered over towards her. ‘Carry your bucket, ma’am?’ He gave her a smile.

She looked him up and down without interest. ‘You can if you like,’ she said. ‘It’s just for them chimney sweeping boys over there. Here take it – I’ve got to
be off. We’re that busy tonight. Just dump the bucket down in front of them and leave it. I collect the empty bucket in the morning when they’re gone off to work.’

Just as though they were a crowd of little pigs, thought Alfie, picking up the bucket that the girl had left on the ground. By the gas lamp at the gateway he could see that the contents of the
bucket looked like pig-swill too. Just a foul-smelling mess of leftovers from plates, burnt bits from saucepans and mouldy slices of bread.

‘Here you are, lads,’ he said as he came to the door. It was pitch dark in there and he waited until they came out before putting down the bucket.

They seemed surprised to see him, but they plunged their hands into the mess and began stuffing it into their mouths as fast as it would go.

‘Nice, was it?’ asked Alfie when the bucket had been cleared.

‘Gets the soot out of your throat,’ said one of them hoarsely.

They were shivering and the fog was coming down heavily. The damp air from the swamp by the river smelt bad – almost as though the smell itself would bring fever. Alfie did not fancy
hanging around there too long.

‘What happened to Joe?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Don’t know,’ said one and the words were echoed by the other two.

By the dim light from the gas lamp, Alfie could just see the whites of their eyes, framed by the black faces and soot-encrusted hair. They were scared; there was no doubt about that.

‘Got his throat massaged a bit too much by Master Grimston, was that it?’ Alfie tried another laugh and the boys looked at each other. The smallest of the three began to cry.

‘Shut up!’ hissed a slightly larger boy. He aimed a mixture of spit and black soot in the direction of Alfie’s shiny new boots.

‘We don’t know nothing,’ sobbed the smallest one and then he began to cough violently. He sank to his knees, still coughing, and the oldest boy bent over him.

‘Clear off; you’re upsetting my brother.’ He glared at Alfie and there was a look of terrible fear in his eyes as he held the child under his armpits and tried to get him to
stand up.

Alfie watched in silence. The small boy was bone thin with bowed shoulders and a chest hardly bigger than an infant’s. It seemed as though the fit of coughing would never cease –
that the boy would die in front of his eyes. He tried to help by patting the child on the back – he dimly remembered his mother doing that to Tom when he had a winter cough – but it
didn’t seem to do much.

‘Clear off,’ repeated the oldest boy. ‘We’ve told you – we know nothing.’

‘And Master tells us to answer no questions,’ added the second boy.

Alfie gave one last look at the youngest boy. He had dropped to the ground again, exhausted by his coughing fit. The other boys bent down and dragged him inside the broken-down stable. There was
no doubt in Alfie’s mind that the boys had been terrified into concealing something.

‘Well?’ he asked when he joined Sammy and Tom.

‘Not the same thing at all,’ said Sammy. ‘Why didn’t you listen to me? I told you it was a gig! I’d know a gig from a cart any day.’

Alfie grinned. Sammy had come up with the goods as usual. A court of law might not take his evidence, but Alfie was pretty sure now that Joe’s body wasn’t thrown down by the river
from Master Grimston’s cart.

But why had the sweeping boys looked at each other like that?

What were they scared of?

CHAPTER 11

S
ARAH
L
ISTENS

‘That’s the parlour maid – looks like she’s going out for the evening,’ said Alfie in a low voice. He, Sammy and Sarah were waiting for the
arrival of Arthur Leamington’s gig near the back entrance to Number Four, in the narrow street where the horses for Goodwin’s Court were stabled.

‘That’s right,’ agreed Sarah. ‘She’s all dolled up – I like that hat!’

‘They’ll be short-handed tonight if the old lady is having her son to dinner,’ said Alfie shrewdly. ‘Sarah, why don’t you —’

‘— offer to help?’ finished Sarah. ‘That’s an idea. I’ll tell the cook that sometimes I wait at table.’ She looked all around before saying in a low
voice, ‘That would give me a chance to have a look at Mr Leamington.’

Alfie nodded. He still couldn’t see why Mr Leamington, the son of the old lady at Number Four Goodwin’s Court, should kill Joe, but he did have a gig and he was connected with the
house where Joe was last seen alive, and he had been seen at the house on the day that Joe was murdered.

‘You go and knock on the back door,’ he said to Sarah. ‘Sammy and I will go and wait in the entrance to Goodwin’s Court until the gig arrives.’

Only a few minutes passed before Sammy turned an alert face towards St Martin’s Lane.

‘Cab,’ he said.

Alfie looked. A horse-drawn cab had stopped on the main road – no cabs came down this narrow street. A young man wearing a shiny top hat got out and handed his fare to the cab-driver. He
laughed at a remark from the cabbie – a strange, high-pitched laugh – and tossed a coin to him. Then he walked lightly towards Goodwin’s Court, swinging his cane as he went.

Alfie watched carefully and then groaned. ‘Yeah,’ he said with disgust, ‘that’s him just gone by us, I reckon. That’s the son, Mr Leamington. Didn’t bring his
gig, tonight . . . Isn’t that just our luck!’

‘Could be interesting,’ said Sammy thoughtfully.

‘Interesting! Is that all you can say?’ Alfie growled.

‘No good you getting mad,’ replied Sammy placidly. ‘Use your head. Why should a man that owns his own gig go to the trouble of getting a cab?’

‘Horse lame?’ said Alfie.

‘Could be,’ admitted Sammy, ‘but it could be that he was afraid that the gig might get him tied into the murder. If I was a toff who’d done a murder and I thought I might
have been seen in this gig, well, I’d give it a rest for a week or so and get a cab – wouldn’t you?’

Alfie slapped his brother on the back and gave a laugh. He was just about to reply when the sound of his own laugh reminded him of something. ‘Did you hear him laugh, Sammy?’ he
asked. ‘Could you do it for me? I want to remember that laugh. It sounded funny.’

‘Bit like a horse neighing,’ agreed Sammy. He stood still for a moment, just as though he were looking into himself, and then produced an exact copy of Mr Leamington’s
laugh.

‘I’ll know that laugh again,’ said Alfie. ‘You know Lizzie at the Hungerford market – the one that sells the baked potatoes? Well, she said something about the man
in the gig having a funny laugh.’