Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders

by Mick Finlay

He looked at the privy door and shook his head. ‘Allow him to fully purge, then give him some fennel tea.’

  ‘We’ll both have a cup,’ I said. ‘Have a little tea party.’

  A terrible stench of corruption reached us. Polichinelle looked at the privy again, wrinkling his hooky nose. ‘I think I’ll use the audience facilities. Pray I don’t get mobbed, my dear.’

  Arrowood appeared ten minutes later. He pulled open the lavatory door to see Nick with his dignity gone, gobs of vomit on his waistcoat and his britches round his ankles. Drops of sweat spotted his forehead.

  ‘Poor fellow,’ said the guvnor. ‘Don’t despair. You’ll pull through.’

  ‘Cocksucker,’ muttered Nick, not opening his eyes.

  ‘We’d better get out of the way, Norman. Capaldi’s men’ll be here soon.’

  We left Nick and went to the big waiting room where the brass band still sat on the floor and performers and stagehands hurried here and there. We found a changing screen and pulled a couple of chairs behind it so we could watch the room without being too obvious.

  Soon, Ermano appeared from the stage door, a bowler on his head and a brolly under his arm. He strode through in the direction of the ladies’ dressing room.

  ‘Stay hidden,’ said the guvnor, waddling after him. ‘He’ll recognize you.’

  Ten minutes later, Capaldi’s Wonders of the World appeared, on their way to the stage for their first performance. Gisele lay in a huge glass tank decorated with starfish and stuffed trout, which was pulled on a cart by Ermano. She’d been painted a blazing orange, while her legs were curled in a brown fish-tail costume. Behind walked Leonie, stiff and proud in the absurd pink dress, her face with its cavernous black nostrils upturned. Her scalp was almost bare, and on her hands and feet were white leather gloves in the shape of hooves. She walked with her arm linked in Sylvia’s, who had her hair combed so it stuck out in fans on all sides of her face, framing her jutting lips. She walked in silence, her rumple sticking out behind her in a dress short enough to show her furry legs. It looked like she was in a trance.

  When they’d gone through to the stage, the guvnor found me again. ‘Ermano’s sent for English Dave,’ he said.

  ‘How’s Nick?’

  ‘Still in the privy. Ermano tried to get him up but there was no chance.’ The guvnor sighed and shook his head. ‘The fellow’s a brute: he belted him around the face so hard it shook the floor.’

  ‘Did he notice you?’

  ‘He didn’t even look at me. There are people everywhere.’

  After half an hour the ladies returned from their performance, Leonie marching ahead, Sylvia behind with Gisele’s hand on her shoulder. Ermano followed, talking to Ralf. His overcoat was open, revealing his bright red waistcoat. His face was still bruised blue and yellow, and I noticed he’d stuck his queer little pigtail into his collar where it wouldn’t be seen.

  It was about five when a bloke appeared I recognized. He was the bloke that arrived on a bicycle outside Capaldi’s house, the one who attacked Neddy. Though he had neatly cut hair and a thick moustache, you could see right away he was a bully: he walked like the swell mob, pushing through the performers with his belly out, his shoulders back and his feet wide. You couldn’t miss that rubbery scar that wormed across his face.

  I kept back behind the screen as he paused to ask one of the dancers directions. She pointed down the corridor. He gave her a quick kiss and she laughed, pushing him away. He whispered in her ear, then cruised off.

  Arrowood followed him. Now and then, a showgirl changing her costume by the clothes rails looked over at me sat there behind the screen. Nobody seemed to mind. There were a few other blokes sat around the big room just like me, and I remembered hearing that one of the showmen sold tickets to gents so they could watch the showgirls getting ready backstage. It made me feel dirty, and the next time one of the performers looked at me I felt my face colour. Get a grip, you twerp, I told myself. I stood and stretched my legs, feeling hungry. We’d missed our dinner again.

  Some time later, Ermano passed through and disappeared toward the street. Then the ladies came back for their next performance, this time followed by English Dave. Ralf had vanished again.

  The guvnor joined me.

  ‘That’s him, but we need to get him alone. There’s too many people about here. He’ll be with them until the show ends, so how about we get something to eat and return later?’

  We found a coffee shop and ordered some cabbage and potatoes. The guvnor went around gathering the papers as lay about the empty tables. The Times and the Daily News reported on Constable Mabaso from South Africa tracking two bandits from Johannesburg thought to be Senzo and Musa, and the Star mentioned the guvnor, saying he was working with the Aborigines’ Protection Society to find the Zulus. But that was it. No news of a reward being posted yet.

  Lloyd’s Weekly had a bit on Kitchener’s campaign in Dongola. I didn’t know why we were fighting in Sudan and I didn’t much care: it was just another battle in our never-ending war with the world. I shut the paper and looked around the shop. On the next table were a mother and two boys, maybe seven or eight year old. They were sharing a single slice of bread. As we ate, the lads watched us, watched each spoonful as it travelled to our mouths.

  ‘Isabel will have finished her interview for the medical scholarship by now,’ said the guvnor. ‘I wonder how she got on.’

  ‘She’s been studying long enough.’

  ‘She was reading my Havelock Ellis, you know. The Criminal. I told you about it.’

  I nodded but said nothing. I didn’t want another bloody lecture on Havelock Ellis.

  ‘D’you think it’s a sign she’s becoming interested in our work?’ he asked, hope aflame in his piggy eyes. He dug his spoon into the spuds.

  ‘How were the babies this morning?’

  His face fell. ‘No better. It can’t be typhus. It just can’t.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m sure it’s just a fever. It’ll break soon.’

  He held my eyes for some time, then opened the Pall Mall Gazette.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said in a bit. ‘There are more Zulus in town.’

  ‘They’re amaQwabe, sir.’

  Ignoring me, he read out the article. ‘Much curiosity has been excited by the arrival of the Zulu Princess Nobantu in the city. She is staying at the York Hotel, accompanied by two attendants. The princess is a strange-looking lady of the Zulu type. She wears a coronet of a gold colour instead of any other head-dress, and but scant clothing, her arms uncovered when indoors and her bodice lower than the current fashion. We are informed she is a bright and volatile person, with a fine flow of language and a quick wit. Last night, when she and her suite drove to Covent Garden for a pantomime, their carriage was mobbed by a ruffianly crowd who held the wheels so that they could peer into the windows. The princess appeared much less disturbed than an English lady would have been from such an indignity at the hands of Zulus. Mr Barber Beaumont is staging exhibitions of the Zulus in Brighton and Edinburgh, followed by three weeks in the Alhambra, London.’ Arrowood shook his head. ‘That carriage ride must have been good publicity: I think Mr Beaumont’s taken a leaf from the Barnum book. Isn’t it odd the Capaldis didn’t mention this Beaumont fellow as another competitor for their Zulu show?’

  ‘Maybe he’s an honest man.’

  A couple of parsons on the other side of the room stood and left the coffee shop, leaving their plates of beef and dumplings half-eaten. The moment the door shut on them, the mother and sons moved to their table and began swallowing the left-overs as quick as they could.

  ‘What are we going to do about English Dave?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll return to Piccadilly Hall to make sure he goes back with the ladies, then call at Gresham Hall later tonight. We’ll have to get him to talk, Norman. If he doesn’t know where S’bu and Mrs Fowler are, he’ll know where that boarding house is.’

  I sighed. I never liked it when we had to use force on a bloke,
but we weren’t getting any closer to finding S’bu and Mrs Fowler and I didn’t see any other way.

  ‘It might not even be Capaldi,’ I said. ‘It might be Delacourte.’

  ‘Or Mr Beaumont, it appears. But we have to start somewhere.’

  The guvnor chewed his lip for a while, then picked up the paper again. After a few minutes, he groaned and passed it to me, pointing at a story: Charles de Vere Beauclerc was suing his father, the Duke of St Albans, for causing him to go bald.

  ‘What a world this is,’ he sighed, stuffing his mouth with a quantity of cabbage. A thread of gravy oozed into his whiskers. ‘D’you ever wonder who your father was, Norman?’

  ‘Not anymore. I thought he might show up for Ma’s funeral, but he never did. I stopped caring a long time ago.’ I pushed my bowl away, winking at the smallest boy on the next table. He came over and took it. ‘D’you think of yours much?’

  ‘I can’t help it with Ettie’s face leering at me over breakfast each morning. He had that same disapproving look, even when he was trying to be reasonable. I’ve been reading Maudsley on temperament and it’s got me worried we’re tainted. And Mercy, of course. I hope she hasn’t any of his blood.’

  The guvnor’s old man was a parson who spent the last ten years of his life tied to a chair in a private sanatorium. I’d never met him, but I imagined he was just an older model of the guvnor – an overfed round belly, short legs, a red, jowly face set in a balding ox’s head. That sort of thing.

  ‘Ettie isn’t tainted and nor are you,’ I said. ‘You’re a bit over-emotional, is all. Your nerves are nearer the surface. That isn’t insanity, far as I know.’

  He patted my hand and became thoughtful.

  ‘D’you think I should get new teeth?’ he asked at last.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We were back at Piccadilly Hall as the last of the crowds emptied out on Great Windmill Street. It was about ten o’clock and the air was still, the clouds overhead thick and smoky. Frost covered the pavements; the horses tethered to the line of hansoms blew white from their muzzles. We waited behind a coffee stand about fifty yards from the stage door: after ten minutes, the performers began stepping out and disappeared along the road. Polichinelle stopped to sign the bills of a couple of odd gentlemen wearing jester hats and thick reefer jackets. At last, the doorman and English Dave lifted a trolley out. On his back, with his knees in the air and his boots flat on the planks, lay Nick, his arm crooked over his face. He groaned as the wheels clunked over the step.

  ‘Careful, Dave!’ cried Sylvia. She wore a long, red coat, a bonnet and scarf hiding most of her face.

  ‘He ain’t hurt,’ growled Dave, turning the cart. ‘Get a four-wheeler.’

  Sylvia crossed to the line of cabs as Leonie and Gisele appeared at the door. We watched as they helped Nick aboard the carriage. As soon as they were moving, we got in a hansom and followed them down to the Embankment, over Vauxhall Bridge and onto the South Lambeth Road. When they turned into Capaldi’s street in Stockwell, we asked the driver to stop. The guvnor had a think.

  ‘We’ll wait for them in Gresham Hall,’ he said at last. ‘There’s nothing we can do while they’re in there, and we need Dave on his own. It wouldn’t do any harm to have a look round anyway, just in case they’ve got S’bu hidden there after all.’

  It was nearing eleven when we arrived in Brixton. There were a few glimmers of light in the houses, but the front windows of Gresham Hall were dark. A couple of dogs were ravaging a manky pigeon in the gutter, a baby cried somewhere near, but there was nobody around to disturb us. We walked down the path to the annex at the back of the building.

  I knocked at the yellow door a few times, but there was no movement inside so I got out my betty and had a fiddle with the lock. It was an old spring stock job and it clicked open in moments. We stepped inside the dark corridor and listened.

  No sound. The guvnor lit his pocket candle and we began to search. The kitchen was cold: no sign of anyone being in there for hours. Aside from the stairs, there were two other doors in the corridor. One was a cupboard full of mops and brooms, the shelves stacked with Bibles and prayer books. The other led to the hall itself. The door wasn’t locked, so we stepped in. The high, thin windows of the big room let in a faint glow from the streetlights outside. Chairs were set out in rows in front of a small stage, where stood a lectern. A harmonium sat on one side. We had a look in the two cupboards on either side of the stage. The smaller one held a ladder and a stack of chairs. The larger, big enough to walk around in, had piles of books on the floor, a little dresser, a few crates stacked against the far wall.

  We went back into the corridor. Opposite the kitchen were the stairs leading to the floor above. We paused a moment, listening again. Somewhere outside in the cold a pigeon purred. The wind was strengthening, rattling the side door.

  We crept up the stairs, the guvnor behind as always. At the stairhead, he gave me the candle. There was a short, dark corridor ahead, with a window on one side and a door at the other. A noise ahead made me freeze.

  It sounded like a body moving, a soft rustle that appeared then just as quickly disappeared, leaving only the guvnor’s wheezy breath on my back. Quiet as I could, I pulled the pistol from my pocket and walked on. The door on the right was ajar. I paused as I reached it, holding up the candle. A bed was against the near wall, with something like a pile of canvas on it. I took a step inside. The pile shifted and a face appeared, its eyes screwed up. I moved closer.

  ‘Senzo,’ I said. ‘It’s Norman.’

  He shut his eyes, pulling the canvas sheets about him.

  ‘Senzo!’ hissed the guvnor. ‘We told you to hide in the loft. English Dave’s on his way.’

  ‘Leonie said she’d make a noise,’ came Thembeka’s voice from behind the door. She was sitting on the edge of a mattress on the floor, clutching her thick shawl to her neck. Her eyes were only half-open. She nodded at the hatch in the eaves. ‘The door’s only there. We’d have time to hide before anyone came up the stairs.’

  ‘That was a risk,’ said the guvnor.

  ‘It’s too cold in there,’ she answered. ‘There’s no proper floor.’

  Senzo pushed himself upright, lowering his boots to the bare boards. He spoke to Thembeka as I checked the hatch: there was nobody there.

  ‘Did you find S’bu?’ asked she, rising to her feet. She’d been sleeping in her hat.

  ‘Not yet, ma’am,’ said the guvnor. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She told Senzo. He nodded, his sad eyes cast down.

  ‘What can we do, William?’ asked Thembeka. ‘We must find him. He’s only a boy.’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t leave here. Until we find who killed your cousin and Mr Fowler, you’re in danger.’

  ‘It was Mr Capaldi’s men,’ she said. ‘We’re certain. The police must search his house.’

  ‘They did search it. And you didn’t actually recognize them, did you? We need proof. Now, listen. We’ve just been to Scotland Yard. A policeman’s arrived from Johannesburg.’ The guvnor stepped closer to see their faces better. ‘Constable Mabaso.’

  ‘Mabaso?’ said Senzo, hopping to his feet. He spoke quick to Thembeka, his brow drawn over his eyes. She shook her head and replied. Senzo spoke again.

  ‘He’s here?’ asked Thembeka. ‘In London?’

  ‘Yes. He’s working with the police.’

  ‘Does he know where we are?’

  ‘We’re the only ones who know.’

  Thembeka walked to the window. The guvnor said nothing, waiting to see how they’d explain it. She spoke to Senzo again. He shook his head, then made a sound that could only have been a curse. They fell silent.

  ‘Why’s he tracking you?’ asked Arrowood when it was clear they weren’t going to speak. The candle was guttering: I spotted a hand-lamp on the floor and lit it.

  ‘What did Mabaso tell you?’ asked Thembeka.

  ‘I want you to tell us.’

  ‘First you t
ell me.’

  He sighed. ‘He said Senzo and Musa were in the Ninevite gang.’ I watched Senzo as he spoke. Though he spoke no English, his head was pushed forwards, following every word, trying to make sense of it. ‘He said they’d raided a mine owner’s compound and killed a child and a guard. They stole a wage cart and some gold bullion, then fled through Mozambique to Portugal and then Paris. From there they came to London.’

  She snorted, an angry laugh. Then, without looking away from the guvnor’s face, translated it into African for Senzo. Again, they talked.

  The guvnor checked his watch and sighed. ‘Dave’s taken the ladies to Capaldi’s house. I’m parched. How about we all go downstairs and make a cup of tea? Norman can keep watch. We’ve a lot to talk about.’

  When we were in the kitchen, Senzo started a fire in the burner. Thembeka got out the mugs. The guvnor helped himself to a bit of the cake we’d had before while I rolled a smoke. Nick’s old straw mattress was upright against the wall; I leant against it, watching out the window in case anyone came up the path.

  ‘Is it true?’ asked the guvnor, standing with his bum to the burner. ‘They raided that compound?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thembeka. ‘Sam and Musa. They are Ninevites.’

  ‘Thieves,’ grunted the guvnor. He studied Senzo, who stared back at him.

  ‘The Ninevites are thieves, yes,’ she said, the muscles in her jaw moving beneath the skin. Her eyes were hard, and I sensed she was tired of having to explain things to us. ‘But your people are worse. You’ve stolen our land. You kill us in the mines. You beat us and imprison us for breaking laws we never wanted. The white man makes our boys dig gold for him. The Ninevites just dig some of it back.’

  Arrowood said nothing for a while. Then he took a bite of cake and asked, ‘Who killed Mr Kruger’s child?’

  Thembeka held her hands out to the cooker to get a bit of the warmth. ‘Zixuko. A Ninevite lieutenant. He killed the boy and the guard, but he’s dead. The other guard shot him.’

  ‘Mabaso said it was your cousins who killed them.’