Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (27 page)

“So you helped him?”

“He was cooking up a scheme to cheer himself up. I told him when we were coming up to town and he set up a welcoming party. I was expecting fireworks, or maybe a brass band.”

“To embarrass them?”

“For a laugh,” she said.

“Because Nellie had left him and Coxhill had orchestrated it?”

“For a laugh,” she insisted, voice cracking with amusement. Hester cared nothing for industrial sabotage or syndicated espionage, or any of the tangled plots I had conjured up. “Roxy so full of himself, and Nellie turned all hoity-toity like, they needed the wind taken out of their sails. Roxy loved working out secretive times we could arrive so as nobody’d see us. What a hoot, says they, to take the late train. Why not, says us girls, expecting we’ll head for their club and make a night of it.”

“So how did Berwick find out?”

“I nipped out and sent him a wire.” She smiled a naughty little smile. “You should have seen their faces when the waterworks started up in their faces. Serve ’em right.”

I nodded, picturing the scene. Coxhill struts from the train, showing off to his fancy friends how his machine is putting the crowning glory to the greatest station in Christendom. Alongside him, Nellie with her new fellow. Skelton, tucked in some corner of the square, watches – glumly or exultantly? – as said machine pops its cork all over them. “Why the body?”

“Body?”

“I mean… What I meant was the body of the clock. Why would Berwick steal a clock’s workings?”

She shrugged. “Nellie had a lovely watch he made her. Engraved and all. She used to wear it pinned to a bow on her bosom. Until she got a gold one off her new fellow.”

This betrayal I somehow found the most objectionable. Besides that, Hester was the first person who had let me in on the game. While everyone else held their tongue or wove me fairytales, she delighted in telling it all, irrepressibly drawn to share the fun of it.

Her brow darkened. “It’s not right, forgetting your old bestest mate, is it now? With her high-falutin’ friends, living the high-life in their posh frocks and flash carriages.”

“So bitter, Hester?” I smiled. “Did Coxhill not treat you well?”

She made a face. “My own fault. I had shillings in my eyes and all. Horrible little man he is, in every department.” She chuckled to herself. “Not that it’s got me anywhere, except bleedin’ Hoxton Hall. Chucked out of my lodgings too. What was the need for that, I ask you? We’re like puppets. They pull a string and up we jump; they pull another and the curtain falls forever.”

“Hardly forever, Hester. You’re not finished yet.”

She smiled. A valiant smile, yet it made me feel glum. “Nellie don’t look so clever now, either, eh? All sorts of promises he made her. We’ll see if he makes them good.”

The first time I spoke to her, I had actually assumed it was none of my business who had stolen Berwick’s girl. It seemed unnecessary. Ungentlemanly. Now I realised what a poor detective I was.

Hester sat looking at me with appeal in her eyes. That was what she wanted from me. To rescue her. She had been dropped from a great height, all the way from the West End to the East, and she thought I could break her fall.

“Put in a kind word for me, will you?” She drank down her tea. “And look after yourself. You’re thin as a rake.”

“I’ve been under the weather.”

“You’ve been underfed, poor boy. You should get someone in to feed you up.”

I laughed. “You overestimate a sergeant’s wage.”

“I didn’t mean a maid,” she said, a little crestfallen. She took out her purse to square up. “I’d best be off.”

“Hester,” I said, putting my hand on hers. She withdrew it and rose from the table, as I drew out my own money to pay. Foolish me, I almost let her go and I hadn’t got my answer. “Who is Nellie’s new fancy man?”

“Away with you,” she laughed. Seeing I was in earnest she burst out, “Don’t play your games with me. You know who. You’ve been sent to catch me out, so’s they have an excuse to stamp me further into the mud.”

“Hester, Hester, I’m not playing a game.”

“They told me not to tell. You know they did.”

“Who told you?”

“You know very well. Them as knows.” She headed for the street.

I followed. “Did Coxhill tell you to keep quiet?”

She gave a hollow little laugh. “He didn’t need to, though that Hunt made some less than friendly suggestions. But it’s your man I’m scared of.”

I grabbed her arm roughly. Too roughly, but I had to know. “Hester, you must tell me what you’re talking about.”

“That bloody inspector, wasn’t it?” she cried in exasperation.

I stood in the middle of the road. “Which inspector?”

“Little bloke in the long coat.”

I let go her arm, feeling the world around me spin. “Wardle?” I said in a whisper.

“Himself. Keep your mouth shut good and proper, he said and he promised that would make it all right. More of a threat than a promise, I s’pose. Must dash now, love. I’ll be late for curtain up.” She pecked me on the cheek and was gone.

“Fancy seeing you here, Sergeant.”

I turned in dismay to see the shrewish little reporter from the
Bugle
, rolling up with a hoofer on his arm. “Scholes. What are you doing here?”

“Theatre review, my friend.” He grinned at the girl. “Like a spot of culture, me. Coming along?”

“Not tonight,” I said.

“Don’t you like a bit of music?”

“Oh yes,” I said, turning for home, “but I’ve no stomach for it tonight.”

A?PRINCE AMONGST MEN

“I have news,” said Miss Villiers, leaning forward to pour me a cup of tea. “You have been too busy, it seems, with visits to actresses, to grace us with your presence in the library.”

“Miss Villiers, I was injured,” I exclaimed. “Besides, Hester has furnished priceless information.”

“Not to mention famous novelists and their daughters.”

“Ruth!”

“Mr Collins uses the library, you know. He was most pleased when I was able to show him to the particulars of the Road House murder so promptly. Detective fever, I explained to him. Detective fever? says he. Wonderful phrase. I shall steal it for my next novel, if I may.”

It seemed too long a time since our last tea room meeting, and I smiled as I sliced the cake. I had told her of my discoveries, and my injury. The story of my return to the Rose and Crown enthralled her particularly.

She, in her turn, had been no sluggard. First she had popped along to Red Lion Square, where the Reform League’s central office was attached to the working men’s club.

“I was politely informed by a well-meaning old duffer called Kenelm Digby that the League was an association of diverse organisations with convergent interests. As such, they had no record of the millions of citizens who had attended meetings or contacted them. Even if they had such a record, he doubted whether he should make it available to any old Tom, Dick or Harry. That is, without being openly rude, he sent me packing. You would need a warrant, I think, to persuade him that your intentions were
bona fide
.”

I shook my head. Wardle had told me to end an investigation that he regarded as a personal tomfoolery and a waste of police time. “I could never request such a warrant. Not as things stand.”

“Another door closed,” she sighed. “But I have pursued a second line of enquiry. The British Museum is not the only institution of learning in the world. Our man, I reasoned, might have turned elsewhere to leaven his reading diet of politics and persecutions. Fearing to be a nuisance to you, I took it upon myself to make discreet inquiries. At the London Library, nothing. Clerkenwell, Camden and Finsbury, nothing.”

“But?” I said impatiently.

“But I am pleased to report my intuition proven correct. Our man joined Mudie’s Lending Library in 1855, before it removed from Red Lion Square to New Oxford Street, recommended by a certain Mr Digby. Besides novels, he liked poetry. Apocalyptic stuff. You know the sort, Shelley and Blake, Christopher Smart, John Skelton, right back to Dante.”

“John Skelton? That was his father’s name.”

“John Skelton was Poet Laureate, but to Henry VIII. Not much use to us. By late last year, after we started looking for him, a new direction in his reading emerges. History, or rather drama and novels based on history. The Bastille, Cromwell, Guy Fawkes. Hamlet, Julius Caesar, the rape of Lucretia. Biblical tales, like Samson, David and Goliath. Now, several of his books had faint pencil annotations. Scribbles, they seemed like, and at first I thought them simply illegible. But I wonder if it might be code.”

I slammed my palms on the table so hard I upset the teapot. I had omitted to mention the notebook inscribed with meticulous cipher, and the secret writing that Madame Skelton spoke of.

“I knew it.” She scrabbled around in her bag and passed me a book, marked with a bookmark. She drummed her fingers on the table. “I took out the Everyman Shakespeare just in case. See how he’s marked passages? That’s in Julius Caesar.”

I stared at the margins filled with pencil lines. “That’s the same hand, no doubt about it. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll have a stab at finding out.” She knitted her brows. “I’ll go back and copy across all I can find.”

“Sounds a deal of work.”

She shrugged. “No point in trying to crack a code without being thorough. All you need is one tell-tale passage. Translating a single sentence might be enough to match his code with the alphabet, although he may use encipherment beyond that.”

“Is he still taking out books?”

“He has one outstanding item, a translation of the Indian epic, the
Ramayana
, a tale of princes chasing fabulous maidens.” She made a face, perhaps in disdain of such tales, and of such maidens, or perhaps in envy of them. She put down her teacup with an air of finality and raised an eyebrow. “So. Are you pleased with the efforts of your industrious assistant?”

“I am.” I bowed my head under her scrutiny. “Sorry I’ve been out of touch.”

“You’re looking the worse for wear.”

“Close brush with a different kind of fever.” I did not explain the severity of my illness. Instead I pooh-poohed her attentions, and related Hester’s comment that I needed looking after.

“Applying for the job, was she?” Miss Villiers replied, rather sharply. We got up in a disjointed mood and took our leave of each other.

Hurrying back from meeting Miss Villiers, I heard Wardle’s voice raised from down the corridor. I hesitated at the door, but it swung open, and out sprang Scholes, his mouth set in a grim line. At least it was not I who had incurred the great man’s wrath.

“Glad we’ve come to an understanding, Scholes,” said Wardle, following him out and holding out a hand in unusually spirited style. Scholes shook it with a certain reluctance and bustled past me.

“Trouble at the printing works, sir?” I grinned.

“Watchman!” He looked me up and down, decided I was no bringer of plague, and thrust his hands back in his pockets. “There was a difference of opinion. I believe the newsman has seen sense. Lunch?”

I had never seen him so pleased with himself as that day in the Dog and Duck.

“Good morning’s work,” he said, tucking into a loin of pork. “Scandal silenced, culprits confessing. And all thanks to your good work, Watchman.”

I kept silent. I had done no work for a month.

“That Scholes, bloody vermin, must have seen you down the Evans while he was digging dirt. A stroke of luck for us. He connected you with me and came to check the rumours. Otherwise he might have gone ahead and printed his filth.”

“Oh, yes, sir? What was it he wanted to print?”

“Won’t print now. Not now I’ve had a quiet word.”

“Won’t print what, sir?”

He looked at me squarely. “Just one of my special concerns. Very important person in a tight spot. Rumours in the clubs.”

I nodded, unable to muster an appetite. I was dismayed by the sudden feeling we hadn’t been working together at all. I huddled into the corner of the snug, struggling to restrain my annoyance. “So you persuaded Scholes to steer clear of libellous rumours?”

“Libellous?” he replied, mouth full of potato. “Your innocence is touching, Watchman. When important persons are seen sneaking out of private boxes with young ladies they should have nothing to do with, the press may feel justified in pursuing certain rumours.”

“You mean you’re hushing up stories that are true?”

He snorted. “Don’t give me the small town innocence, son. You know very well this city is run by money.”

“I don’t follow, sir.”

“Paxton and his gang not only own the
Bugle
. They’re big fish in the Great Western Railway, who inexplicably chose not to invest in Pearson’s underground railway. I say inexplicable, but I happen to know the Monopolies Commission wouldn’t allow them. That’s why their pet newsrag, the
Bugle
, churns out doom and gloom about the underground trains.”