The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow (10 page)

‘Well, there you are then. And the Sergeant has talked to other people too, remember – Cooper and Billy’s uncle and even Edith, I think.’ Lil made a face, as if to suggest that anything Edith would have to say couldn’t be much worth listening to.

‘The problem is that he doesn’t really understand why I went back to the store. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense to him that I’d gone back to fetch Billy’s jacket. I just wish there was some sort of proof I could give him.’

Lil almost upset her tea in her excitement. ‘But there is!’ she exclaimed. ‘The jacket itself, of course. Didn’t you take it away to clean?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did you actually clean it?’

‘No!’ Sophie’s eyes lit up as she realised what Lil was driving at. ‘I was going to – I hung it up to dry overnight, and then I was going to launder it today.’

‘Well let’s go and get it now and take it to this idiotic policeman. I’ll back you up, and I’m sure that Billy will too, and with the jacket as proof he’ll just have to believe that you’re telling the truth.’

Sophie’s spirits began to rise. Of course, Gregson would probably still be rude and suspicious – but at least she’d have something that she could show him that might make him take her story seriously.

Lil insisted on accompanying her to the lodging house, but when they arrived, Mrs MacDuff, the landlady, was waiting for them. She had a strange expression on her face.

‘So here you are at last,’ she said as they came through the front door. ‘Strolling in as if you haven’t got a care in the world. Well, let me tell you, this is a decent, respectable house. I won’t stand for this kind of thing.’

Sophie stopped abruptly. ‘Whatever do you mean?’ she asked.

‘What do I mean? What I mean, young lady, is that I’m not accustomed to having policemen turning up on my doorstep, asking questions and poking about. No indeed!’ Mrs MacDuff bridled angrily. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to, my girl, but you’d better mend your ways or you’ll be out on the street.’

Sophie felt cold. Policemen had been there? Did she mean Sergeant Gregson? What could he have been doing at her lodgings?

‘Tracked mud all up my clean carpets going to your room, they did.’

‘Policemen?’ repeated Lil, but Sophie had already turned and was running up the stairs. On the threshold to her room, she stopped motionless and stared inside.

The room that she had left neat and bare that morning was now almost unrecognisable. The bed had been tipped over on to its side, the scanty covers pulled off and muddled on the floor. The washstand was smashed, and the closet door stood open, hanging drunkenly on one hinge. Her clothes were scattered in disordered piles, some of them ripped or torn, and her dear old doll lay face down in the midst of it all. Her trunk had been pulled out from under the bed, the lid forced open. Worst of all, everything had been swept off the mantelpiece: books spilled pages and her precious cowslip jug was shattered into a dozen fragments. For a moment, she couldn’t move.

Lil came running up behind her. ‘Oh, Sophie . . .’ was all she said.

‘What’s all this?’ Mrs MacDuff entered the room, red-faced and panting. She looked around in high indignation. ‘Well this is a fine way to treat your room, I must say!’

‘
I
didn’t do this!’ cried Sophie. ‘It must have been those policemen you let in!’

Mrs MacDuff scowled. ‘I don’t care who did it – it’s got to be cleaned up. And anything damaged or broken will be paid for. It looks more like a pigsty than a young lady’s room! I’ll be back up in an hour, and I want to see it spick and span by then.’

The door shut behind her with a bang.

‘Ugh, what an awful old witch,’ exclaimed Lil in disgust. She heaved the bed back upright with a heavy crash, and began to pile the bedclothes on to it. ‘Oh, Sophie, this is perfectly ghastly. Do you think Gregson sent some policemen here to search your room?’

Sophie was crouching on the floor amongst the chaos of her belongings. ‘I suppose they must have been,’ she said flatly. ‘I wonder if he thought they’d find the jewels,’ she added, shaking her head in disbelief.

‘What about Billy’s jacket?’ Lil asked suddenly, remembering their original purpose.

Sophie glanced up at the back of the door where the jacket had hung. ‘Gone,’ she said. ‘As are one or two other things, by the looks of it.’

‘Do you suppose they took them away as – as evidence?’ Lil said, her eyes widening, even as she bent down to pick up clothes from the floor. She shook out Sophie’s good velvet dress, now creased and dirty, and then paused to try and collect a handful of green beads, broken from their string and scattered all about. ‘I don’t understand. Why would the police make a mess of everything like this? How could they?’

Sophie picked up her doll and smoothed down its tumbled hair. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘Perhaps this is what they do.’

‘But it isn’t
fair
,’ said Lil.

Sophie took up the precious photo of her Papa from where it was lying on the floor. The glass had been smashed, the cracks fracturing right across his face. She felt hollow. ‘No. No it isn’t fair at all.’

‘I
tell you what, this is a bit of all right, this is,’ Joe said. He was looking around as if quite delighted with the place, Billy thought. It was after closing time and the two of them were seated on upturned crates in a small storeroom in the basement of Sinclair’s. High windows let in the fading light: a candle stuck in an old ginger-beer bottle would provide Joe with a light for later. They were sharing a hastily prepared picnic of a bit of bread and cold mutton that Billy had managed to pinch from the refectory at lunchtime. Joe had fallen on it as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks.

‘Sorry,’ Joe said apologetically, after Billy had watched him wolf most of it down. ‘I ain’t had much to eat these last few days. Been trying to keep a low profile. I don’t want word to get back to the Boys that I’m about.’

‘Who are the Boys?’ asked Billy, watching Joe intently. He was still not at all sure whether he had done the right thing by helping this strange young man sneak into the store basement. Joe’s penitent attitude had gone: he seemed cheerful now, and that in itself made Billy feel nervous. What if all this was some sort of a trick – a set-up? Something to do with the robbery, perhaps? His imagination jumped back to stories he had read, but then he reminded himself that this was not, after all, a Montgomery Baxter tale, where there was always someone trying to pull the wool over the young hero’s eyes. Besides, there was surely not much harm that Joe could really do, shut up in an empty basement storeroom.

‘You ain’t ever heard of the Baron’s Boys?’ Joe was saying, his eyes widening in surprise even as he stuffed the last bit of bread in his mouth.

Billy shrugged and shook his head.

‘Blimey,’ said Joe, chewing and swallowing. ‘Well, I suppose you’d call ’em a gang of sorts,’ he began, and then fell silent.

The truth was Joe was struggling to think how he could start to explain the Baron’s Boys. Even calling them a gang was wrong because they weren’t really – not like the rowdy families of Irish fellows or the East End Jewish clans, the ones who banded together to protect their own. The Baron’s Boys were different. They were the lost ones, the ones without homes or families or anything of their own left to stick up for. He fought to explain this, found that words failed him, went on anyway. ‘They work for the Baron. You know who the Baron is, right?’

Billy shook his head again. Joe was astounded. ‘But
everyone
knows about the Baron. He’s famous in London. You’ve really never even heard of him?’

‘No, never,’ Billy said.

‘My eye,’ Joe said slowly, shaking his head. ‘Where’ve you been hiding?’ He heaved an enormous sigh and went on. ‘The Baron . . . well, I dunno exactly who he is. No one knows his real name. That’s one of the things about him. But he’s the top Johnny in the East End. He’s the man in control and the others all have to answer to him.

‘You don’t want to know the stories about what’s happened to them that’s got on the wrong side of him. Give you nightmares, they will,’ he went on. ‘But you see, the thing that’s really funny about the Baron’ – and here, Joe lowered his voice to little more than a hoarse whisper – ‘hardly anyone’s ever set eyes on him. There’s all sorts of stories about why. Some people say he’s got these terrible scars and burns all over his face, and that’s why he won’t let no one see him. Some people say he’s a black magician what made a pact with the devil and it turned him invisible. Some people say he ain’t a man at all . . . Some people say . . . well they say all kinds of things.’

Billy was sceptical. ‘But that can’t be right,’ he remarked, trying to shake off the strange feeling that had been creeping over him as he listened to Joe’s tale in the dark basement. ‘I mean,
someone
must have seen him.’

Joe shrugged. ‘Those that have ain’t saying nothing,’ he said in a grave voice.

Billy saw to his astonishment that Joe looked genuinely unsettled. Surely he didn’t really believe that this Baron fellow was some sort of monster?

‘There’s a feller who runs the show for him and gives all the orders,’ Joe explained. ‘The Baron’s Boys, they do his business. You know, collecting the rents, keeping folks in line. Shutting up folks he needs shutting up. Doing whatever he wants, no matter how much it makes you sick to your stomach. There’s no choice, see? I used to be one of ’em. That’s about all a fellow like me can do, I reckon.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Billy, beginning to feel intrigued.

Joe shrugged. ‘There ain’t exactly a lot of ways to get by,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his forehead. ‘No flash jobs in posh shops like this place, anyway. My old grandad, he was a cabinet-maker. Made a few bob so we could pay the rent, keep a roof over our heads. But he died when I was just a kid and I ain’t got no one else. I’ve not got much schooling and I never learned a trade. You got to have a bit of tin to go in somewhere as an apprentice, and anyway, they’d rather have a proper British lad, wouldn’t they.’

Billy frowned, confused, and Joe explained. ‘Grandad came over from Russia. Anyway, a feller like me can only make a few pence here and there. Carrying luggage for the swells at Liverpool Street, selling papers, that sort o’ thing. Or if you’re smart you might pinch a wallet now and then. But that won’t keep a roof over your head and there’s no way I want to get stuck in the Spike.’ He must have seen Billy’s questioning look, because he added, ‘The workhouse. Rotten dump.

‘So I got in with the Baron’s Boys. It’s not much of a life, though.’ Joe sighed. ‘I’ll level with you: I hated every second of it. Don’t reckon they ever thought much of me, either. Jem, he always said I hadn’t got enough bottle for it. But I was useful to them on account of I’m good with animals – horses especially. You got to have someone good with horses about, so you can get away sharp when you need to. But they wanted me to do more. They wanted me to . . . well, never mind what it was they wanted me to do, but I didn’t want to do it.’

Joe was silent for a moment. His thoughts had run back to the alleyway, the knife, the watchmaker behind the window. He shook his head and then went abruptly onwards: ‘So I said I wouldn’t, and I ran away, but they don’t like that. Once you’re one of the Baron’s Boys, then you’re in for good. And if you leave, well then you’re a stinking turncoat. That’s why I couldn’t stick around – I’m a marked man now. But they’ll never find me here. That’s why I came: they don’t come out West, and I bet they’d never dare come to a place like this. I reckon if I stay out of their way long enough, I might be lucky. Maybe they’ll forget about me.’

Billy had listened to all this with great interest, and found himself looking at Joe with new respect. All the same, he still felt anxious. ‘Well, you’d better be careful down here,’ he said warily. ‘Stay put. Remember there’s a nightwatchman on duty. Don’t go wandering about or anything, will you?’

Joe shook his head earnestly. ‘Don’t worry, mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour. This is a cracking good kip, this is. Ever slept rough? No I didn’t reckon you had. Can’t get more than a few winks before the rozzers have you up and move you on again. But this place is diamond.’

‘Well, there shouldn’t be anyone down here much. As long as you stay out of sight in one of these rooms, you ought to be safe enough for a day or two,’ said Billy.

Joe looked unconcerned. ‘There’s plenty of places I can get out of the way, if I’ve got to,’ he said airily. Then he added, more awkwardly, ‘Thanks. For helping me out, that is.’

‘We’re helping each other, remember?’

The light was almost gone now, so Billy grabbed his cap and jacket and got to his feet. Mum would be mad as hops with him if he was late home, but after everything that had happened that day, it didn’t seem to matter any more.

Night fell over London. In the bedroom of the lodging house, barer than ever now, Sophie looked out of the window over shadowy streets and back alleys, the darkness broken only by the faint gleam of the street lamps. In the basement of Sinclair’s department store, Joe slept, undisturbed by vigilant policemen, but still troubled by the phantom figure of the Baron, who stalked him through his dreams. Not so very far away, Lil sat by the red glow of her bedroom fire, patiently threading a handful of green beads one after another, back on to a string. And across the water, on the south side of the river, Billy lay awake in his narrow bed, staring up at the familiar map of cracks in the ceiling by the flickering light of the candle.

He took the note out once more, and carefully traced the letters with his fingers. It was really something, having a proper clue like this. He’d already started trying to decipher it, but with just a candle it was too difficult to make out the smudged letters: he’d have to be patient until the morning. Carefully, he tucked it inside one of the books he kept stacked beside his bed. He didn’t want to risk Mum seeing it and throwing it away, thinking it was just some old bit of rubbish.

He knew it was late, but sleep seemed impossible. He still had a good inch of candle left, so he pulled a copy of
Boys of Empire
from under his pillow, nestled down under the blankets and began to read.