The Hangman's Child (26 page)

At last he felt that his left hand was clear of the stack. He drew up harder, gripping the chimney rim until his head was level with it. The bundle of clothes and the wrapped sections of the head-bar fell softly on the flat roof behind Sun Court. He twisted, hung and dropped. With exhilaration beyond belief, he swore to himself and the soul of Pandy Quinn that he had not come so far only to die.

His fingers trembled a little as he undid the string, unfolded his vest and trousers, turned them out and drew them on. At one side was a drop of fifteen feet to the beginning of the parapet and the line of attic windows. A pipe, installed to drain the flat roof, ran down the wall and connected with another that drained the attic level.

Rann knelt and stretched down as far as he could. There was no lethal band of grease on the pipe, no other defence at this height. If a man fell from here, perhaps the law might call the use of tree-grease murder. He lowered himself, holding the pipe between his knees and with his hands. After the nightmare of the narrow flue, he felt beyond danger. His foot touched the parapet and he steadied himself. The building was silent. Trent's attic window was still open.

He must either go in this way and trust that it was safe or climb down to Sun Court. But if Trent or Bragg or the police were waiting in Trent's rooms, they would surely be watching below him in Sun Court as well. And if all was clear, he could not leave Samuel and Miss Jolly waiting for him. Also, to complete the plan, he needed to close Trent's safe.

A flush of starlight threw his shadow on the attic casement. The room was dark but his moving shadow was answered by a voice.

'Jack!'

Starlight caught an ellipse of almond eyes. He lowered himself into the room and seized her, regardless of the soot and blood. 'It's done!' he said with fierce triumph. 'Sammy still here?' 'Yes,' she whispered. 'Downstairs. He's to keep watch!' 'The bell?' he asked suddenly.

'A woman in black with a veil,' she gasped. 'Rang the bell but went away again. One of Trent's women, p'raps.'

Rann started to laugh with the relief of safety, he and the girl with their arms round one another. Miss Jolly gave a soft lilting murmur of simulated surprise as he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

'Later on,' - he nodded at the jug and bowl - 'we'll wash and use the clothes that's in the carpet-bag. We'll go to the rooms Sammy-took at the Granby. But not yet.'

He drew down her pink equestrienne cavalry pants, as he had longed to do since watching the purposeful little swagger with which she went up the stairs the night before. He slid his hands under the coppery-cheeked smoothness of Miss Jolly's bottom, and made sooty love to his accomplice on Arthur Trent's white sheets.

25

Lord Tomnoddy stood among Grecian pillars at the Tivoli Corner of the Bank of England. He seemed lost in admiration of the tall windows and balustrading of the London and Westminster Bank on the far side of Lothbury. Few passers-by spared him a glance. Samuel had chosen him a russet tweed to make Short-Armed Tom the figure of a countryman in town, marvelling at all he saw.

Tomnoddy was to be inconspicuous. Samuel, under the
nom-de-guerre
of Mr Wilberforce, Attorney-at-Law, had also recruited three private 'bank-messengers'. They were men of genteel bearing and uncertain health who advertised for light work in the weekly papers of Holborn and Clerkenwell. Their pleas had been unanswered for some time. When chosen by Samuel they had shown a spaniel-like gratitude.

Each advertiser, at a conversation with Mr Wilberforce in a lounge of the Great Eastern Hotel, Bishopsgate Street, found the work even lighter and better paid than he had hoped. The attorney was settling the estate of a deceased nobleman before returning to his old-established practice in Cambridge. He was able to offer employment for a month, at a senior clerk's wages of two guineas a week.

In return, each man carried sealed letters to banks, insurance companies, and brokers in the commer
cial streets nearby, as well as
to the post office of the Eastern Counties Railway Station, adjoining the hotel. From the banks and brokers, the messenger would bring sealed replies. Most of these contained little more than leaflets or formal answers to a general enquiry from Samuel as to the weekly discount rate or the market price of short-dated government stock.

If a messenger had absconded with such an answer, scenting bank notes or currency, he could have been replaced next day by other genteel paupers from the deep well of London's surplus labour. However, Samuel had a sympathetic nose for an impostor. The messengers he chose were evidently men of probity.

Mr Wilberforce's importance was plain. Among papers posted by his messengers, from the Eastern Counties Railway Station, were envelopes bearing addresses of imaginary landowners and legal partnerships, stretching from Cambridge to Edinburgh. Weeks or months later, these envelopes with their folded sheets of newspaper to bulk them out, would reach the Dead-Letter Office. Yet in London or the provinces, Mr Wilberforce and his clerk, James Patrick, appeared to be in correspondence with men of wealth and with the great houses of finance. As Samuel's clerk, Rann thought his first two baptismal names a sufficient disguise.

Several times a day, unknown to the bearer, the sealed letters from Mr Wilberforce to the banks contained bills of exchange to be cashed for Bank of England bonds. Soapy Samuel, as colonial bishop, joint stock investor, guardian of a seductive ward in chancery, had arranged these transfers in the previous fortnight. Now, on such errands, the messenger was shadowed by Tomnoddy and either Miss Jolly or Maggie Fashion.

It had been necessary to use counterfeit acceptance-stamps, carved from slate, on a dozen of the bills. Every other endorsement was genuine, the bill unimpeachable, tallying with all records, the stamp placed just where that scrutineer always placed it. No clerk was likely to query Miss Jolly's immaculate design. At the worst, with a timely warning, Samuel and Jack Rann would have left the

Great Eastern Hotel or the Marquis of Granby before the first enquiries began. The messenger alone would be left to explain the fraud.

One messenger had been detained at a bank. At Tomnoddy's signal, Miss Jolly scurried to the Great Eastern to alert Samuel and Rann. The two men withdrew and watched from a distance for the messenger or the police. Ten minutes later, however, the messenger returned with a sealed packet of Bank of England bonds.

A greater risk was that the duffer, as Samuel was apt to call the messengers privately, might smell out the scheme and help himself to the contents of an envelope. Tomnoddy, otherwise unknown to the dupes, was to confront any man who varied from the direct route back to the Great Eastern Hotel.

On the second day, the messenger who emerged from the City Bank, at the corner of Bishopsgate and Threadneedle Street, turned towards the river, rather than to the hotel where Samuel waited. He had gone a dozen steps when Tomnoddy tapped his shoulder and asked if he had lost his way. The messenger blushed, murmured something of lung tonic from an apothecary, and was escorted to the hotel. Cautioned by threats of dismissal and losing his character, he was plainly to be trusted for the remaining days. He never saw Tomnoddy again, his visits to the banks shadowed by Maggie or Jack Rann.

Samuel chortled and rubbed his hands as the bonds were delivered. He swore there was 'no reason why it should ever end'. Each evening, Tomnoddy took the documents and added them to those already bundled under a board in the shabby upper tenement of Preedy's Rents. Before the end of the week there were twenty-seven bonds, representing more than £9,000. Jack Rann knew the loyalty of Short-Armed Tom. Moreover, Tomnoddy understood nothing of bills of exchange or bank bonds. Within his hidden world of Preedy's Rents and the tosher's hunting ground of sewers and outfalls, no policeman in London had heard of him. He was the safest custodian of all.

Bills of exchange accepted by the banks were taken each evening to the central Bank Clearing House near Lombard Street. In this raucous financial market-place, their value would be credited to a bank against its day's debits, which it incurred when bills of its own were accepted by other banks. No scrutineer queried the bank-bills presented on behalf of Mr Wilberforce. A week or two might pass before the first duplicates were presented and the hunt began.

Of the bills that Rann brought away from the vaults, seven were bank post-bills to the value of £950. These promised to pay any bearer of the note a sum of money and were as easily negotiable as bank notes. However, they were redeemable within a fortnight, during which the duplicates now lying in the Cornhill vaults would also be presented. To liquidate the stolen post-bills in London might alert the banks too quickly. If they were cashed in the provinces, there would be a further delay of several days before they could be suspect.

As James Patrick supervised the last of the messengers' errands, Mr Wilberforce travelled, as he said, To Brighton and Back for Three-and-Six'. High above a stretch of glass-green sea, he stepped into the sunlight from the freshly painted station with its temple pillars of cast-iron and its arched glass canopies. For the benefit of the Southern Counties Bank, he had chosen to be Mr Samuel, prospective resident of the Royal York Hotel. The Southern Counties was a large institution but, being peculiar to the area, would take longer than its competitors to suspect a fraud. At Richardson's Bank in Western Road, which took special care of Indian Army officers, he would be Major Wilberforce. From previous use of the alias, he had a useful range of small talk.

At Richardson's bank, Major Wilberforce was the prospective purchaser for himself and three sisters of a seaside mansion in Brunswick Square, Hove. He hesitated as he handed the head-cashier the bills.

'I really wonder, you know, whether I should take so much money.'

The cashier looked puzzled and Major Wilberforce admired his own master stroke. Whoever knew a trickster to decline the booty?

'I wonder whether it is wise, you understand, to be carrying such an amount

The cashier had the answer, as Major Wilberforce knew he would.

'My clerk shall accompany you to Brunswick Town

Major Wilberforce shook his head, such courtesy quite defeating him, gallant old soldier though he was.

'That is kind,' he smiled. 'Exceptionally kind.'

Brunswick Square was a ten-minute walk. Its fine white houses with their bow-fronted drawing-rooms promised evenings of waltz and quadrille. Morning sunshine danced on the waves where Brunswick Lawns lay open to the sea. The major turned to his escort.

'Thank you so much, my dear young fellow. I can manage now, these last few steps. So very civil of you

He walked slowly on, glancing once to ensure that the young man had gone from sight round the corner. Then he turned his back on the white houses and the sparkling tide. Soapy Samuel, thin and sleek, sped for the railway station again, sharp-faced and white-haired, nose forward in his urgency, a hunting rodent.

Next afternoon, Mr Wilberforce and his clerk attended the Private Drawing Office of the Bank of England. Their visit concerned the settlement of their deceased client's estate. The Private Drawing Office was divided from the adjoining Bill Office and Public Drawing Office only by wooden partitions. It was a new banking-hall, tall windows recessed between pillars, where the bank's bonds and bills might be redeemed. Across its centre stood a polished wooden counter, attended by three clerks. A bank porter in red jacket, white breeches, top-boots and silk hat, was positioned at either end.

A porter led the client to the counter. Mr Wilberforce had consolidated the proceeds of the client's estate in Bank of England bonds, recognized by the clerk as having been issued at the bank two or three weeks before. They were now negotiable and Mr Wilberforce wished them exchanged for Bank of England notes in denominations of fifty pounds. The clerk might think it unusual for such a sum to be dispersed by bank notes to the beneficiaries. But provided an attorney discharged his duties to the estate, the precise method was his own affair.

In its pillared grandeur, the Private Drawing Office had the silence of a great cathedral. Jack Rann watched and supposed that a smartly dressed attorney's clerk was the last man in London to be arrested here as the fugitive of a murderous tap-room brawl in Clerkenwell. The bank clerk looked up at Samuel's white hair and noble smile. He glanced down again. The bonds had been recorded and bank notes were being counted.

Rann knew that Bank of England notes were registered on issue, the holder's name traceable. Such was the fear of counterfeiting. But after such care, these notes might be taken a few hundred yards to the Continental Bank in Lombard Street and changed for Bank of Scotland notes, which were neither recorded nor traceable. Scottish notes might then be changed at will for sovereigns, American gold eagles or currency or coin of any denomination. This could in turn be used to buy bonds or stocks in any name the purchaser cared to write upon them.

'Oh, Pandy Quinn, Pandy Quinn,' he said softly to himself. 'What a dodge it was - and what a man you were!'