The Vice Society (5 page)

‘See here,’ said Mr Williamson pointing to the board where addresses of undelivered letters are written. ‘Number 2b, St Mary’s-hill. Evidently, the letter carrier has discovered what I knew to be the case: there is no 2b.The letter has already been left here that so the rightful recipient may come to collect it when he sees the address listed.’

‘And the pencilled notes alongside the original addresses?’

‘The re-delivery addresses. I was hoping our mysterious letter writer would have come in and added his. Nevertheless, I have an idea that we can solve this mystery.’

Mr Williamson talked to one of the clerks and was handed a bulky ledger: the Daily Packet List.

‘In this book, Mr Jute, the details of those same undelivered letters on the board are entered and, where relevant, the redelivery addresses additionally appended. Let us look over previous weeks and . . . yes . . . look here: do you see the number of letters sent to the false address on St Mary’s-hill?’

‘There are many.’

‘Quite. And the re-delivery address is identical in each case:
3
Moor-lane.’

‘So – we go now to the re-delivery address at Moor-lane.’

‘We do.’

It seems unnecessary to state, however, that the two gentlemen did not find the letter writer at Moor-lane. What they found was a rather portly old woman whose name was predictably not Mrs Burgoyne and who admitted, under the onslaught of Mr Williamson’s threats of gaol, what the latter had assumed all along.

‘I don’t write the letters, sir. Truth is, I can’t read too prettily – only this name “Burgoyne”. I just receives ’em.’

‘Then what? Who collects them?’ said Mr Williamson, his notebook at the ready.

‘O, nobody collects ’em. I takes out the money order and goes to the Post Office to cash it.’

‘Without any proof of your identity as Mrs Burgoyne?’

‘They knows my face and they never asks. If they did, I could organize a friend to swear it soon enough.’

‘Hmm. To whom do you give the money?’

‘To nobody, sir. I makes out a new money order – less ten shillings for my own troubles, you understand – and I posts that to a Mr Mann at an address on Milton-street. ’Tis but ten minutes’ walk from the Post Office, but I posts it all the same.’

‘Who arranged this process with you? “Mr Mann” himself?’

‘O, nobody, sir.’

‘What nonsense are you speaking now, madam? Who asked you to do this?’

‘All the writers, they knows me and what I do. I just receives a letter telling me what to send and where. They all knows I ask for my ten shillings and that is that. No need to meet ’em at all – just how they like it.’

‘Milton-street, you say? That does not surprise me at all. Are you familiar with that street’s reputation, Mr Jute?’

‘I cannot say that I am . . .’

‘Hmm. No other street in the metropolis is more closely associated with the ink-fingered endeavour than Milton-street. It is home to poetasters and hacks, penny-a-liners, copyists, plagiarists, petty novelists and fancy-makers of all varieties. They do not stay long, for they are thrown out or imprisoned for debt before they can get properly accommodated. We should go there immediately – he is likely to be home and expecting letters.’

‘Am I in trouble?’ asked the fraudulent widow.

‘Assuredly. You are to save all future letters you receive and a man will come to collect them. Fail to do this and you will find yourself at Newgate.’

Thus leaving the grumbling old woman, the two gentlemen made their way hastily to Milton-street. Unfortunately, even as Mr Williamson rapped at the door, the man they sought, having been forewarned just moments previously by a panting boy sent by the false Mrs Burgoyne, was exiting from a rear window with his few possessions almost spilling from his leathern bag. The reader need wonder not a moment longer, however, about his identity.

It was I.

THREE

What thoroughfare is there in London to compare with Holywell-street? Certainly, there are others grander and more handsome, just as there are those narrower and darker – but none have the distinctive character of this most unusual passage.

From the church of St Clement Danes to the church of St Mary-le-Strand it stretches, a line of sin strung between two pillars of virtue – a parallel shadow and antithesis to its majestic neighbour the Strand. As the broad courses of commerce and progress flow ineluctably around, human flotsam is washed here to eddy and drift at a different pace among the blind alleys and courts. And if there
was
once a spring here, it is now subsumed beneath the Old Dog tavern, all holiness lost.

Untouched by the Great Fire, the overhanging gables sigh with the pressure of history, closing almost together above the cobbles to shut out the light of modernity. No bold stone
façades
for these edifices: it is plaster and lath that peels away and decays over centuries of rain and wind, begrimed multipaned windows that admit only the merest illumination. Some call it charming; others call it rotten – a sewer in place of a well.

The shops are of a dilapidated sort, quite out of the current fashion for plate glass. Rather, they adhere to the style of generations past, wooden signs creaking above doors with tiny dimpled glazing through which to peer into another world. Whether anyone would want to explore this world is another matter: the second-hand clothes shops and masquerade warehouses offer only worn and faded goods; the barber’s is a dingy bourn from which few travellers return, and moneylenders lurk in wait up unlit passages for the desperate.

But it is, of course, the booksellers who have made the street their own – and because of whom it has earned its reputation. Covering almost the whole southern side, their sloping trestles are stacked with spines and their windows thick with tomes and prints to snare the passer-by. Boys stop to gaze at maps and pictures of great ships; gentlemen pore over intricate engineering diagrams; ladies on an illicit diversion from the larger thoroughfares chatter about the latest images from Paris – and all are united in their loathing fascination, their fearful hope, their pagan Christian longing for immoral filth.

For it is also in those windows that the proprietor tempts the law with his blasphemous tracts, his lubricious tints, his provocative lithographs and proscribed copper plates. Crowds gather, people point, and outrage is the communal pleasure as all stare upon what must not be seen.

Should a gentleman venture into those shops and ask for something ‘warmer’ than the common fare, he might – if trusted – be directed into an upper room where the bookseller stores titles and pictures that would make an old soldier blush. Every variety of amatory endeavour is here described and depicted in terms of the basest and most lurid manner. No imagination is required, and none sought, in the works printed, stored and sold upon these premises.

The reader will have no doubt discerned my admiration for the place. There is something of the last century still existent there: the anti-religious liberalism and nonconformist spirit that has kept it a writer’s bohemia. By which I mean a sanctuary for the poor, dissolute, oddly attired and tenuously employed; the press-men, publishers, printers and penny-a-liners; the freethinkers, church-haters, plagiarists, garret-dwellers, fantasists and barely sane.

And it was into this world that Inspector Newsome strolled that afternoon. He was accompanied by a tall and burly new recruit to the Detective Force: one John Cullen who, for the time being at least, was still officially a constable until his suitability for the superior department could be properly ascertained.

The indigenous populace of that place seemed to sense that the two were policemen, despite their lack of uniform. It was the same awareness displayed by hens when the fox is close, and Inspector Newsome was aware of the movements of the people ahead as they slunk into shops, closed doors and sent secret warnings to those who had set such mechanisms in place: ‘Watch your merchandise! The buzzers are close.’

‘This is the place,’ said Mr Newsome to his colleague as they stopped outside Colliver’s coffee house. ‘The proprietress has left word that she will meet us outside and show us to the room. No doubt she does not want us to interact with her customers.’

Faces scowled from the smoky interior at the policemen. From outside, they looked in at a hearty fire and tables populated by boisterous red-faced men who were otherwise engaged in a variety of discursive activities. One group appeared to be having an energetic argument over a newspaper article.

‘It is cold today, is it not, sir?’ remarked Mr Cullen, breathing into his hands and glancing out across the rain-slick cobbles.

‘You are not on the beat now, Constable. We need not bother with such meteorological banter. Look around you; see what you can see. That is what a detective does.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you need not call me “sir” while we are in the street. Our presence here has already been telegraphed to every business, but we need not advertise it further.’

Mr Cullen looked across the road and watched the directionless progress of an itinerant umbrella mender. With his back-borne burden of walking canes, broken ribs, flapping scraps and fishing rods, the man seemed an ambulatory human porcupine. Mr Williamson would have been able to say something insightful about the man and his background, mused Mr Cullen, who had once worked with the detective. The constable, however, could only think that this bitter cold portended snow.

Presently, a woman could be seen making her way through her customers to the door. She emerged in a cloud of smoke, heat and the earthy aroma of coffee.

‘Mrs Colliver, I presume,’ said Mr Newsome.

‘I trust you will be letting me have my room back today,’ replied Mrs Colliver. ‘I am losing money every day with that man of yours standing at the door.’

Her cheeks were red with the heat of the coffee house. Her bonnet was tied so severely beneath her face that the cord vanished between her flabby chins. If she was not guilty of some crime, she exhibited all the signs of being so: eyes shifting about anywhere but on her interlocutor, and her hand nervously pushing stray tendrils of blonde hair back inside the bonnet.

‘I can speak with Mr Colliver if you are busy,’ said Mr Newsome.

‘Dead. Now – let us get this over with.’

‘I would also like to speak with you after we have examined the room.’

‘I have already told all I know.’

‘And you will do so again. You may lead the way.’

The lady hurried them through the coffee house to a wooden stairway that led upstairs to the rooms. There, the uniformed constable lounging at the door to number seven jerked to attention when he saw the detectives and did his best to look assiduous in his duty. Mrs Colliver jangled keys upon a ring.

‘Nobody has entered this room since it was sealed – is that correct?’ asked Mr Newsome.

‘That’s right,’ replied the constable and the lady simultaneously.

‘Good. You may leave us for the moment, Mrs Colliver.’

‘Will I be able to rent my room tonight?’

‘You will be advised of that momentarily, madam. Let me take the key – I will return it to you shortly.’

She muttered her way back downstairs while jabbing rebellious hair back into her bonnet and Mr Newsome held the eager Mr Cullen’s arm: ‘Do not touch anything in here, Constable. Use your eyes and let us hope that your brief time in the company of Sergeant Williamson has taught you something of investigation.’

‘Yes, s—. Yes, Inspector Newsome.’

The room was cold due to the window still being wide open. The inspector walked over and looked at the ledge outside where the victim must have held on. There were no marks, but the night rain may have obliterated any. A scuff mark on the wall below the window may or may not have been caused by a rapid exit.

‘What causes a man to leap from a third-floor window?’ said Mr Newsome.

‘Perhaps he was thrown,’ offered Constable Cullen.

‘I think not. Had he been thrown, I fear he would have gone head-first and been unable to grab hold of the ledge. No – something happened here that he wanted to escape from. And the door must have been barred to him.’

‘There are four dirty glasses here,’ said Mr Cullen pointing to a plain three-legged table. ‘Were not only two men present?’

Mr Newsome bent and smelled each glass. ‘Sherry. I must speak again to Mrs Colliver about her claim that the men ordered no drink. What else?’

‘Neither bed appears to have been slept in. They are barely disturbed.’

‘True, but look here by the pillow of the bed nearer the window: a long blonde hair, possibly of the unruly variety. Neither man had such hair.’

‘Did the gentlemen have a lady in the room with them, then?’

‘That remains to be seen, Constable. If they did, they did not use the beds, and she must have made a hasty exit after the precipitation of Mr Sampson. Or perhaps the hair has been here for weeks. Keep looking; there must be something else.’

In truth, there was little else to be seen. It was a room like any other room of its sort: a hearth with the fire long ago burned to ashes; a generic rustic painting slightly askew on the wall; a few sticks of unimpressive furniture and a smeared looking glass above a table.