SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman (16 page)

Verity waited, assuming an air of professional indifference. A glimpse between the moving figures of the crowd showed the door of Roper's establishment open, and Roper himself standing on the steps with a male companion. They stood there in conversation. Verity pulled the cap from the lens and almost danced with impatience as he waited for the tall auburn-haired girl to shift her stance a little. At that moment she handed something to the other girl and stooped to attend to the child which was pulling irritably at her skirts. The view over her head, to where Roper was talking to a swarthy, bald-headed stranger, was clear. With a plate in the camera, Verity took their portrait. Though the girl straightened up again, her attentions to the child were by no means over. When she stooped once more, there was a fresh plate ready in the Ottewill camera. The two men were facing him and the focus was perfect at the second exposure, which promised to be as sharp as the work
of any back-yard studio in Hol
born or Lambeth. Verity straightened up, aware as he did so of the brunette's curious gaze. Sh
e tugged her friend's arm urgentl
y, as if pulling her away.

" 'e's done that again! 'e's took a portrait! " she squealed, and then shouted for Verity's benefit, "Did yer get a good picture of us?"

Half-mocking and half-frightened at what they believed to be a photographic record of themselves, the two amateur whores scurried away,
tl\e
taller one dragging the child after her, the brunette looking back over her shoulder until they were safely round the next corner. Verity, in his moment of triumph, regarded them with magisterial indifference. Returning to the stagnant heat of his little tent, he watched through the lens as Roper escorted his client down the steps to a waiting brougham wit
h all the professional unctuous
ness of a dishonest valet. The door closed again, and a long, uneventful ten minutes passed in the sunlit street. Verity ran his hand ruefully over the horizontal creases in his waistcoat, conscious of not having eaten since breakfast.

A littl
e crossing sweeper, not more than ten years old, leant on his broom nearby and watched Verity at work. The grime on the child's face was as dark as coal dust on the features of a collier.

"Here!" said Verity with a peremptory snap of his large fingers, "mind this for a minute or two and there's a copper for you afterwards."

"Wery good, yer worship," said the boy smartly, taking up a sentry-like stance with his broom. Verity left him to his guard duty
and strode away towards the littl
e shop near Regent's Circus, where the black lettering on the gas globes above the door proclaimed Signor Flores' Confectionery.

"Lumps of Delight, miss," he said to the little girl who served there: "Quarter. Quick-sharp, if you please." Even before he was out of the doorway, his fingers closed on the first soft Turkish sweetmeat in its thick powder.

At a little distance down the street he thought at first that the child crossing-sweeper had fallen in a dead faint. But all too soon it was apparent that the huddled figure on the pavement was the tent of black cloth fallen upon the remains of Sergeant Samson's camera and its stand. As Verity lumbered forward and snatched away the cloth, his mind was dominated by the appalling and intimidating prospect of his next meeting with Samson. The polished sides of the wooden camera were splintered and its brass hinges warped, as though the whole box had been struck by some tremendous downward blow. He stared at the wreck in utter dismay.

"I was jist a-sweepin' for a lady across the road when it happen," said the boy shamefacedly, "when the two gentlemen with the iron bracket slipped and dropped it. Right across the cloth it went. Wery sorry the gentlemen was, and said they'd be back in two minutes to settle up for any damage. Only they ain't come back," he concluded superfluously.

"It's not even as if it was mine!" said Verity helplessly.

He was still pondering this when the boy touched his sleeve confidentially.

"You was lucky, you
was, yer worship," he said gentl
y, "you might 'ave been in there when it happen."

Verity looked at him, still clutching in his hand the packet of plates which he had carried to the shop and back. He felt a sudden chill in the heat of June.

"That's just where they thought I was! " he said, his eyes widening with consternation and anger. "When they didn't see me standing by it, that's where they must have thought I was! They bloody well meant to cooper me! That's what!"

That evening, in the attic room in Great College Street, Westminster, which served for his lodgings, Sergeant Samson said for the third or fourth time,

"It ain't the cost, Verity. Money can't mend it!"

"So soon as I can, I'll pay the account in full," said Verity firmly. "There's better cameras than that can be got for five sovereigns from Gilbert Flemming's in Oxford Street. I'll do it so soon as I can. Only don't go prosing on about it, there's
a good fellow. They meant to do for me. They thought I was still in there—and I might've been!"

The room was almost in darkness and he could just make out the black bulk of his colleague as Samson rocked the heavy glass plate in a dish of liquid. On his fingers, Verity felt the wrinkling from the astringent film of pyrogallic acid.

"What beats me," said Samson, watching the dish carefully, "is why you can't just settle with Roper, man to man. There's enough dark corners, ain't there?"

"It won't do," said Verity, growing stern.

"I don't know about that," said Samson beginning to reminisce, "they don't squeal after, not hardly ever. I 'ad trouble once with a great cove in St Giles's. When it came to, he let me knock him down with no more fight than a baby. In the pushing about, I bent his left thumb and finger back so far that they bust right across. I promised him next time it'd be his right hand. Let him try a lock or a pocket with fingers like a bunch of old twigs. You've no idea how useful he was to me ever after."

The glass plate rattled against the dish once more, as Samson drew it out of the pyrogallol solution.

"That's the two of Ned Roper and his friend," he said with exaggerated patience. He set a match to the mantle and held the two squares of glass against the light. Both were uniformly and deeply black.

"I took their portraits!" said Verity with some indignation.

"That's as may be," said Samson, putting the plates down again, "but the art of portraits ain't learnt in one afternoon."

"Keep 'em!" said Verity optimistically. "I've heard they sometimes brighten a bit with keeping."

"Have you?" Samson nodded glumly. "That's what all the sharps tell their poor gulls when they hands them a no bono plate. 'Only keep it, sir, and you'll see it'll soon brighten up!' I'm surprised you ain't tumbled to that trick before. I'm rather afraid you had a bad afternoon of it."

"Oh?" said Verity stubbornly. "I get so close to the secret of the conspiracy that they think it worth killing me! Close as McCaffery ever got! I don't call that a bad afternoon. If you was half as good a hand at constabulary vigilance as you are at shilling portraits, Mr Samson, you might go a very long way indeed! "

Sergeant William Clarence Verity,
of
the Private Clothes detail, Whitehall Office, presents his compliments
to
Inspector Croaker and has the honour
to
draw Mr Croaker's attention
to
complaints made by the public to Sergeant Verity in respect
of
the premises known as 84, Langham Place. These complaints concern misdemeanours and felonies committed by street women and their keepers who frequently resort
to
this house. It has been brought to Sergeant Verity's notice that the dupes
of
these women are robbed and physically assaulted on the premises, the proceeds
of
such robberies being kept in the charge
of
a woman
of
low repute, Jacoby, common law
wife
of
the keeper
of
the house. The victims
of
such assaults have been
left
upon the area steps without coats or jackets, and even without trousers, to the great scandal
of
the public peace. Sergeant Verity appends a statement by Mr Julius Stringfellow,
of
Paddington Green, to this effect.

Sergeant Verity is also informed that the house is a resort
of
men
of
depraved taste and morals
for
criminal intercourse with female children
of
tender years. Among further information offered is an allegation that the premises are used
to
harbour felons who may thus evade the pursuit
of
police constables, and that a concealed way has been made, opening from the premises into a stable-yard on another street.

Sergeant Verity therefore requests that Mr Croaker may take steps
to
obtain a justice's warrant, whereby officers
of
the Division may enter these premises in search
of
the proceeds
of
various robberies, and
of
evidence
of
other felonies and misdemeanours.

Sergeant Verity has the honour to remain
Mr
Croaker's obedient humble servant.

W. Verity, Sgt.
10th
of
June 1857

Inspector Croaker is in receipt
of
Sergeant Verity's communication
of
the 19th instant. Mr Croaker must observe at the outset that the memorandum does not appear
to
have been copied into the
letter-book. Sergeant Verity w
ill have the goodness to make such copy at once and not to allow the omission to occur in the future.

Mr Croaker is also bound to observe at once that the evidence submitted to him by Sergeant Verity is in no way substantial enough for any application
to
be made
to
a justice. A house
of
ill-repute is not amenable to search as such. Sergeant Verity should know this, and,
if
not, he will learn it for the future. There appears to be no corroborated evidence, in this instance,
of
the robberies
of
persons as alleged by Sergeant Verity's informants.
Mr
Croaker is surprised
to
learn that the other forms
of
disorderly conduct alluded to have not been suppressed by Sergeant Verity and the other officers
of
the Division in the proper discharge
of
their duties.

Mr Croaker regrets
to
hear that instances may have occurred in which females in early womanhood may have forfeited their virtue in the manner described. He must, however, observe that the duty
of
the police is
to
enforce the law as it at present exists. By that law, a young woman is competent to consent
to
her own seduction at 12 years
of
age.
If
Sergeant Verity has corroborated evidence that children
of
more tender years have been criminally abused,
Mr
Croaker will expect to hear it. Mr Croaker finds it necessary
to
remind Sergeant Verity that the cause
of
virtue is not aided by a feebly based prosecution which ends in the acquittal
of
those accused.

Finally, Mr Croaker is aware that the tenant
of
the premises referred to is Edward Roper, with whom Sergeant Verity appears to be conducting some personal feud.
If
Sergeant Verity's communication is prompted by any such vendetta, Mr Croaker must reprimand him severely. Should Sergeant Verily ever attempt to incriminate Mr Roper by unsubstantiated assertions, Sergeant Verity may render himself liable to prosecution for attempting to pervert the course
of
justice.

Mr Croaker remains &c.

H. Croaker,

Inspector of Constabulary
21st June 1857

"Pervert the course of justice! " The broad nape of Verity's fleshy neck glowed with indignation. He glowered across the bare wooden table, on which lay the remains of a supper of broiled bones, ham and eggs, and bottled stout. Stringfcllow, to whom a dinner-table was only a dinner-table so long as the meal was in progress, busied himself in poking dust from the crevices of a harness brass with the corner of a handkerchief. In an old green shooting coat, a billicock hat, arid brown breeches, he looked the perfect image of self-confidence.