Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders

by Mick Finlay

  ‘Was it a cab?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘The driver ain’t licensed, but he picks up fares here. Station master sends him away when he sees him, but he keeps coming back. It’s a green one, French-made, I believe. Needs a lick of paint. Drawn by a brown mare.’

  ‘You know his name?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Is he here every day?’

  ‘Few day a week. Reckon he goes to other stations too.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the guvnor, jamming his hands in his pockets. He looked at me. ‘What’s happened to S’bu, Barnett? Nobody seems to have seen him. Why wasn’t he with them?’

  ‘You think he’s been captured?’

  ‘Either that or he’s on his own somewhere, the poor lad.’ He looked up into the dark sky, the wind flapping his Donegal coat. ‘He must be terrified.’

  ‘You want to go and look for him?’

  ‘I don’t know where we’d start. At least we have a trail for Senzo and Thembeka. If we can find them, they can tell us what happened. You stay here this evening, Norman. Go home at ten if he hasn’t appeared. I’ll come tomorrow morning. If you don’t hear from me, come and relieve me at midday.’

  ‘Don’t go to the Hog, William. You’ll need to be up early.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he promised with a click of his heels and a quick salute. He got me a saveloy from the station and left me there.

  I waited at the entrance to the station for the next few hours, watching the cabs come and go, pacing back and forth trying not to freeze my ballocks off. My mood was sour: two nights on the watch mid-winter was hard, and my joints were stiff, my face raw. I ate a few mince pies from a cart outside the station and nursed a couple of mugs of hot wine from another, trying to swallow my way into a more seasonal mood. I paced till ten. The green four-wheeler never came.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Pelican was warm and smoky, a party of balding men in suits standing in the middle of the room celebrating something. Molly was bringing through a couple of bowls of soup from the back: she winked at me as she delivered them to a fellow sitting in the corner with three kids. One of the boys grabbed a bowl and pulled it to his chest.

  ‘You share that!’ barked the bloke.

  I got a mug of brandy and hot water from the landlord and found a place by the fire, where I stood watching the balding men. Each had a stale-smelling cigar and a tumbler of claret. They laughed too loud, clinking their glasses. One of them spoke and there was a cheer. I watched their fat necks, their collars too tight, their sweaty faces red from the labour of being loud and jolly and with each other.

  A tall, unhappy-looking woman near the door started singing ‘A Violet From Mother’s Grave’, her back straight against the wall, her eyes fixed on the little boy with the soup spoon in his hand.

  One by one the punters fell silent, all except the balding men, who were too caught up in their efforts.

  ‘Shh!’ hissed a craggy old fellow in a French cap, poking the baldest one with his stick.

  The middle-aged men hushed, and we all listened to the woman sing. She was Irish, her nose hooked, one hand lying on the table, withered and black and twisted. At the chorus, the old fellow joined in, and a short girl of sixteen or so leaning against the counter.

  Only a violet I plucked,

  when but a boy,

  And oft time I’m sad at heart,

  this flower has given me joy

  So while life does remain

  In memoriam I’ll retain

  This small violet I plucked from mother’s grave

  As they sang, Molly came beside me and squeezed my belly. I put my arm over her shoulder and we listened as the woman sang the next verse alone. The second chorus came, and this time half the pub were singing.

  ‘You know that was Black Mary’s song?’ she asked when the song ended and the talking started up again.

  I nodded. ‘Your master said you were sick.’

  She looked over at the door, where a couple of shifty fellows had just come in. ‘I’m good now.’

  ‘Oi, Molly!’ cried a hairy woman. ‘Couple of bowls here.’

  She looked in my eyes. ‘They all want soup suddenly. Had to get a new pot warmed up at this bloody hour. You eaten, Norm?’

  I nodded, draining my mug.

  ‘Molly!’ called the landlord.

  She stepped away from me. ‘Got to work. I’ll be off in two hour. You staying?’

  ‘Too late for me, mate. Been working all day.’

  She took the mug from my hand.

  ‘Take me out for cakes, sometime, Juggins?’

  Juggins. For a few month one summer, back when we were young, Rita was always using that word – on me, on Molly, on her mother. It amused her. It was a word from some other place, and all the more funny on her lips because of it.

  Molly smiled, a tear coming to her eye, and in a surge of feeling I remembered how strong we were bound.

  I kissed her on the cheek and said I’d see her in two days.

  The guvnor was sitting on a pile of newspapers outside W.H. Smiths when I gained the station next day. It was a bright, cold morning, the sky a hard blue. On his knees the Shields Daily News lay open, a little pile of winkles half-eaten. Four hansoms queued on the road waiting for fares.

  ‘You look terrible, Barnett,’ he said. His bowler was pulled over his ears, his scarf wrapped round his neck. He sneezed and wiped his nose on his glove.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘I’ve asked every cabman. The driver’s name is Bill Craft. Works from here a few day a week, as the sweeper said.’ He shook the winkle shells from the paper and held it out to me. ‘Look at this.’

  It was column titled MIGHT AS WELL BE ZULUS about a speech the Earl of Derby’d given at a school prizegiving in Liverpool. He was telling them about the criminals he’d faced in his years as a magistrate: ‘Nothing has struck me more forcibly than the utter stupidity and brainlessness of ninety-nine out of every hundred of those unlucky individuals,’ he’d said. ‘It is not merely ignorance – that might be explained by their mostly belonging to the poorest class; but, as far as my observation goes, they are for the most part as much below the average of their own class intellectually as they can be morally. Nine-tenths of them might be Zulus for any good they have got from civilization, and that is my answer to the foolish talk you sometimes hear about the worthlessness of merely intellectual training. Civilized beings will at least not have the voices of savages or brutes.’

  I looked up to see the guvnor scratching his greasy scalp furiously. ‘How d’you think our friends would feel reading that?’ he asked. ‘People talk about those they know nothing about with such abandon and always to assure themselves of their own superiority.’

  I nodded, feeling the same vexation as him. But what he’d missed was that the Earl was also talking about me and the friends I grew up with on Jacob’s Island. Most of them had been up afore a beak just like him back then, and some of the things I did would have put me in prison for many years had the coppers been better at their jobs.

  I threw the paper on the ground as he picked up a copy of the Star. ‘They’ve got a whole column on the murders here,’ he went on, turning the page for me and pointing at another column. MEETING HOUSE MURDERS was the headline. I had a quick read, but there was nothing in it we didn’t know already. They were getting close to saying that it was the Africans who’d killed Mr Fowler and Musa. Getting close without actually saying it. Mrs Fowler’s family from Godalming were worried that she hadn’t been heard from. Detective Inspector Napper was named, but not us.

  Before I had time to finish reading, he pointed over my shoulder.

  ‘Well, well,’ he muttered. ‘Will you look at that?’

  There, coming along the Strand, was a green four-wheeler.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We waited as it pulled up behind the rank of hansoms and the driver got down. He wore a long army greatcoat. His bowler was scuffed and b
attered, and one of his boots was missing its lace. Thick lenses sat before his eyes, and his mouth had a sour look. A coster was walking past him on the road pulling a wagon loaded with shoes. In a flash, the driver reached over, swiped a pair of boots, and hid them under his coat. The coster walked on, blind to what’d just happened.

  ‘Bill Craft?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘Who are you?’ he grunted.

  ‘We’re trying to find some Africans you picked up here two days ago.’

  ‘Who said I did?’ he snapped, his eyes almost closing.

  ‘All we need to know is where you took them.’

  ‘Can’t tell you,’ he said, tightening the harness. ‘I’ve a rule to protect my passengers. You wouldn’t like me telling any Tom, Dick and Harry where you go, would you?’

  ‘For thruppence?’

  He thought about it. ‘How about I take you there instead, sir? How would that be?’

  ‘Yes!’ exclaimed the guvnor, surprised. ‘Yes, indeed. What a splendid idea.’

  ‘What’s the fare?’ I asked.

  ‘Let’s say fifteen bob, just to be fair on us both,’ said Craft, still talking to the guvnor. A tongue brown from coffee licked his black teeth.

  ‘Fifteen bob!’ cried the guvnor. ‘Where is this place, Liverpool?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, as I said. Better I just take you there.’

  ‘How many of them did you take?’

  ‘Can’t tell you that either, sir.’

  ‘Is it in London?’ asked Arrowood.

  ‘Can’t say, sir. It’s my passenger protection rule, as I said.’

  ‘You haven’t got a rule. You just offered to take me!’

  ‘I can take you wherever you want to go. That’s my profession, sir. That’s why I’m here. But I can’t tell you other passengers’ doings.’

  ‘But how can we bargain if you won’t tell me where we’re going?’

  ‘We don’t have to bargain.’ He slapped his horse’s arse and gave it a rub. ‘It’s a fair price.’

  ‘It’s too much,’ said the guvnor. ‘Nowhere in London would cost anything like that. I’ll give you two bob.’

  The first hansom in the line picked up a punter and moved off. All the other cabs moved up one space. Craft led his horse forward. ‘It’s all the same to me if I take you or not,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ said the guvnor. ‘Five.’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Climb aboard, gents,’ said Craft with a smile, opening the carriage door for us.

  ‘Oi, oi!’ cried one of the cabbies further up the line. ‘Use the first cab, gentlemen. That’s the system.’

  ‘Ignore him,’ muttered Bill Craft.

  Another cabbie approached from behind. He took my arm, pointing toward the hansom at the front of the rank. ‘That’s the one, mate. First in line.’

  ‘We’re taking this one,’ I told him.

  ‘No, you ain’t,’ growled the first cabbie coming up too. He grabbed Craft’s lapels and shoved him against the wheel. ‘I told you about this afore, you little weasel.’

  ‘Ask them where they’re going!’ cried Craft. ‘Go on, ask them!’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with it,’ said the cabbie. ‘There’s a system.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said the guvnor, ‘we don’t know where we’re going. Only this man knows.’

  ‘That don’t make no sense,’ said the first cabbie.

  ‘I know, but I’m not going to explain,’ answered the guvnor, climbing into the carriage, his great behind marking the end of the argument. It seemed to work, as the cabbie let go of Craft. I jumped aboard and slammed the door.

  The bench was plain wood, crumbs on the floor among the dried mud and one of the glass panes missing in the door. The carriage moved off and we sat back and watched London through the window. Christmas geese and turkeys hung from their legs outside butcher’s shops, costers stood by carts piled high with spiced apples and figs, spuds and carrots, while plum puddings and mince pies were laid in trays on tables outside the many little baker’s. Posters in shop windows yelled CHRISTMAS BOOKS!, CHRISTMAS FASHIONS! In a toy shop was a bright red banner: DO, PAPA, BUY ME A TOY! It made me sad somehow.

  Down we went along Whitehall, where men in toppers chatted on street corners, past Parliament, whose lights peeked shy through its narrow windows, along by the wharves and factories of Millbank to Lambeth Bridge. On the Surrey side of the river we followed the tram lines to Vauxhall Park, down past the board school and the vinegar works, crossing Clapham Road and on towards Brixton. There, soon after the police station, we came to a stop.

  The driver knocked on the roof with his stick.

  ‘Out you get, gents.’

  It was a terraced street of three-storey houses, all made of good London brick. In the middle of the row was a meeting hall, its tall windows dark. Up ahead a lad on a grocer’s bike rode towards us.

  ‘There you go,’ said Craft, climbing down. ‘Gresham Hall.’

  ‘Did they go in?’ asked the guvnor.

  Craft held out his hand. With much groaning, the guvnor took out his purse and counted seven shillings. When the money was in his pocket, the driver answered: ‘Didn’t wait to find out. Now, sir, you want me to wait and take you back? It’s murder finding a cab round here.’

  ‘For another seven shillings?’ said the guvnor. ‘You must think we’re balmy.’

  ‘I’ll do you a special price.’

  ‘Get out of here, you blooming crook.’

  Craft climbed up to his box. ‘Fat pig,’ he muttered as he gee-ed on the horses.

  Gresham Hall was taller than the houses on either side by about a half. A sign was pasted on the wall saying:

  CHRISTADELPHIAN LECTURES

  EVERY SUNDAY AT 7 P.M.

  Hear the momentous truth of the infallible God!

  Free entry. No collections.

  Up a couple of steps was a pair of heavy wooden doors. I pulled on the bell. We heard it ring inside, then silence. I tried the handle but it was locked. I pulled the bell again.

  ‘There’s a door down the side,’ said the grocer’s boy, who’d come to a stop to look at us. He pointed at a little path that ran down the side of the hall.

  ‘Have you seen any Africans around here, lad?’ asked the guvnor.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not here.’

  The boy pedalled off.

  ‘I wonder if I could ride a bicycle,’ said the guvnor, watching the lad bump along the cobbles.

  ‘No, sir,’ I said, fairly sure his body wasn’t put together right for transport as that.

  ‘Because of my haemorrhoids?’ he asked as we went down the narrow path.

  ‘You’d be too heavy.’

  ‘Balderdash. I’ve seen heavier fellows ride bicycles. You can hire them in Crystal Palace, you know. Perhaps I’ll ask Isabel when it’s warmer.’

  The path squeezed between the side of the building and the neighbouring house. We followed it to an annex at the back of the hall, where there was a yellow door. It opened soon after I knocked, and there stood a white woman of nineteen or twenty with the hairiest face I ever saw on a lady. She had no moustache, but the brown hair grew down the side of her face and along her jawline. She wore a Fair Isle jumper, tatty and long, her chest drooping and her hips set back like she was leaning over a well.

  ‘Oh, hello!’ she said, her voice light and bright. She was a Yank. Her eyes rolled over my body, then the guvnor’s, then mine again. ‘What a pleasure to have some visitors. Come in and get out of the cold, fellas.’

  She turned and led us down the corridor. Her rumple was like a big balloon, and where it met her back was a ledge you could rest your mug on. The guvnor raised his eyes at me, though his was almost as big.

  She took us into a kitchen where two more of the queerest-looking ladies I ever saw sat in chairs by the range. The one who opened the door was the youngest by a long way.

  ‘Who’s this, Sylvia?’
asked the one nearest the door. She wore eyeglasses and a headscarf, her face a strange orange colour. She was Continental by the sound of it, French or Spanish, maybe. Or Greek. With mittened hands, she put the gin-jar she was holding on the edge of the range and closed her book.

  ‘Gisele, this is…’ said Sylvia. She looked at me again and smiled. She laughed. ‘Oh, darling, I quite forgot to ask your name.’

  ‘Norman, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Norman Barnett. This here’s Mr Arrowood.’

  ‘And you’re with Mr Capaldi, are you?’

  ‘Well…’ I hesitated, looking over at Arrowood.

  ‘Why are you here?’ demanded Gisele.

  ‘We’ve come to talk to the Africans, madam,’ said the guvnor.

  ‘Africans?’ asked the third of the odd-looking ladies. Her arms were short stumps, and she had little bloodshot eyes. Over her coarse white scalp grew bits of hair like burnt straw. She wore a plain brown dress. Open in her lap was the Star. ‘What d’you mean Africans?’

  ‘They arrived at this building yesterday afternoon, madam,’ said the guvnor. ‘We were paid to protect them and they disappeared. We want to ensure they’re safe.’

  ‘You’ll have a drink, boys?’ asked Sylvia, taking two mugs from a shelf. ‘We only got gin. Sit yourselves down.’

  We lowered ourselves upon a bench by the table. It was warm in there around the range, and we shed our coats and gloves.

  ‘No Africans here, sirs,’ said Gisele. She looked at the third. ‘You see some Africans, Leonie?’

  The short-armed woman shook her head.

  ‘The cabman just told us he brought them here,’ said the guvnor, taking the mug Sylvia handed him.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Leonie, as Sylvia scurried out the room. ‘He must’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘Do you live here, Miss Leonie?’

  ‘We’re staying here a few weeks,’ she said with a smile, then had a sip from a wooden tankard. She was the only English one among them. ‘Are they dangerous?’

  ‘Are you sure they aren’t here?’ asked the guvnor. ‘This is a large building.’

  ‘No, sir,’ answered Leonie, getting to her feet and putting the paper on the table. Her legs were almost as short as her arms, though her body was long and well-fed, almost bursting the seams of her thick dress. ‘No, sir. We don’t know anything about Africans.’