The Inquiry Agent

by William King

  “You are entitled to your suspicions, Dr Davies, but I don't see what it has to do with you.”

  Another prod, another lance of pain, another sharp intake of breath. “Don't you, Mr Brodie? Then let me explain -- I am your physician and I am concerned about you. I have treated you for this sort of beating at least seven times in the past 10 years. And I suspect that this will not be the last time that I do so.”

  His voice was grave, his manner serious and concerned. “It's a hazard of my work.”

  “It was a hazard of your work when you were a Bow Street Runner. I imagine it's an occasional hazard of all police work. But it seems to have happened to you more often of late than it did when you were at Bow Street. Three times in fact, if you want to be precise.”

  “I didn't know that you kept track of this sort of thing.”

  “Policemen are not the only people who keep records, Mr Brodie.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Let me make myself absolutely plain. You're no longer a young man. Your body can't keep taking this sort of punishment. If you keep this up you could end up crippled or worse.”

  “I confess I was thinking something similar myself, doctor.”

  “Good. Keep thinking that. You have two children, Mr Brodie. What will happen to them if anything happens to you?”

  I stared at him and it was the sort of stare that had made many a St Giles bravo back down but he just kept looking back, calm-eyed and even-tempered. He hadn't said anything I could argue with and it was pointless asking him what else I was supposed to do to pay his bills and my rent so I kept my mouth shut.

  “I can see that you've already taken some laudanum so I would not advise you to take any more for a few hours at very least. It would be easy to overdo it with bruises like those.”

  He strode briskly over to the door, stopped there for a moment, looked back at me and said, “I mean it Mr Brodie. Do try and be more careful, for the children's sake, if not for your own.”

  “Thank you for your advice, doctor,” I said after he'd closed the door behind him. “I really needed you to tell me that.”

  Mrs Marshall went out to catch the last hour of the Sunday market before everything shut down for the Sabbath. I didn't envy her; it would be a horrible time to go shopping, with all the workers wives who did not manage to get paid last night taking what money remained from their husband's sprees and fighting to get something for the Sunday dinner before the costermongers, stallholders and shopkeepers shut up for the day.

  I limped through into the children's room and found that Rachel was awake. At first I was worried that my appearance would frighten her. A look in the mirror had shown me a face that would not have been out of place on Mrs Shelley's monster. She did not seem too worried however, which surprised me. It was the first pleasant surprise I’d had in some time.

  “Donald says that you were attacked by bandits last night,” she said. Her voice was even higher and more piping than usual and you could hear her breath wheezing from her chest. The effort of speaking made her cough and you could almost hear the painful rasping of the air against her ribs.

  “That's right, sweetheart,” I said.

  “Were they wearing Lincoln green?”

  “I don't know. I couldn't tell. It was dark. But they were wearing tricorn hats with feathers in them.” She laughed and it sounded as if her lungs were being sandpapered.

  “How could you tell?”

  “Because they used them to tickle me. It's how they managed to overpower me.”

  “Will you read me a story? Donald was reading me Jack Sheppard last night.”

  “And did you like it?”

  “Not as much as he does but it's the only thing he will read me.”

  “Would you prefer something else?”

  “I don't know. It was getting interesting. Jack was being chased by the magistrate's men and I'd like to know whether he escaped.”

  “Then I'll read it to you.”

  “Call Donald in. He'd like to hear it too.”

  So I read them another chapter in the exciting adventures of a young thief and I was filled with almost as much wonder as they were. I could see why the stories were so popular with all the street children and the workers. Every Seven Dials urchin can imagine himself to be Jack Sheppard, and they can all sympathise with the way he robs the rich, for it's what they would do if they had his luck and his boldness. They can imagine being Jack Sheppard in a way they cannot imagine being an industrialist or a general or a lawyer, for the raw material of his life surrounds them and they do not need to envision anything beyond their everyday experience stretched until it is a dream of larceny and perpetual dramatic escape from the law and the hangman.

  Jonathan Wild is merely the embodiment of the law as the same people see it every day; wicked, petty, unjust and heavy-handed to the poor, bought-off by the rich. And yet he too has a demonic attractiveness about him, with all his power and wealth and ruthless treacheries, his ability to hold a grudge and his ability to take vengeance. I have sometimes wondered whether it would not be better to be a man like that than to be condemned as most of us are to powerlessness and poverty.

  And so we passed that Sunday afternoon, two of us lost in a haze of laudanum, and all three of us lost in the wild dark streets of Jack Sheppard's eighteenth century London. And strange as it may sound, I think that in our own small way we were happy there away from our troubles.

  And while we did this, Mrs Marshall roasted the Sunday dinner. If you're a servant, there is no day of rest. She seemed happy enough to put the food on the table and watch us eat. Neither I nor Rachel was very hungry though, for laudanum kills the appetite. Donald, like many a growing boy sometimes picky about his food, loved the beef and Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes and so made up for the way my daughter and I picked at our food.

  “You have to eat, if you want to get better,” said Mrs Marshall.

  I wasn't sure whether she was talking to Rachel or to me so I speared a roast potato with my knife and ate it from the point. I confess there was a strange hallucinatory moment where I imagined I was stabbing Billy Tucker. I'd like to blame that on the tincture of opium but I fear that it was the part of me that always sides with the Devil.

  Afterwards, Mrs Marshall cleared up and I sat in my chair by the fire and very slowly and painfully made entries in my diary.

  I took more laudanum. It dulled the edge of my pain but filled me with a profound sadness and doubt. There's nothing like a good beating at someone's hands to make you take their threats seriously. And now I was forced to take Billy Tucker seriously and it's an alarming thing to consider the fact that a man would cross oceans to torture you to death.

  It was difficult to push that thought from my mind although my other worries put up a good fight. They tried to elbow their way in and let me know all the other things that could go wrong. Ginger Jim Matthews might not deliver my message. Mad Tom Barker might take it into his head to arrest me for receiving stolen goods. I even managed to worry about the house burning down and whether I should take out fire insurance.

  Sunday passed, as it always eventually has to. Rachel went to bed early, sick and with the influence of the laudanum pressing down heavily on her small frame. I sat there and watched Donald read, engrossed in his tales of innocent larceny and untarnished bravery.

  After everybody went to bed I sat down by the fire again and watched the flames dance and read a bit of Jack Sheppard myself and wondered what it would be like to be so free of guilt and so wild of heart. And as always happens when I read that story, I found myself identifying a little with Jonathan Wild, the corrupt thief-taker, and wondering if he was really as bad as the Newgate calendar claimed. After all, he might just have been a man like me, trying to make his way in a cold, cruel world.

  Monday, April 12th 1841

  The next day a letter arrived from Ginger Jim. It said to meet him at the coffee stall in Haymarket at noon. Since events following my last meetin
g with him had not gone so well for me, I slipped a pair of knuckle-dusters into my pocket and picked up my heavy walking cane, the one with the cast-iron head suitable for use as a bludgeon, and set out on my way. I needed the cane anyway since I was having some trouble walking without pain.

  Somewhere off in the distance a German band played. Coaches rumbled along the street. An omnibus swept past up the Strand. Its driver bellowed at me to see if I wanted to come aboard and railed at me loudly when I ignored him.

  Haymarket looked completely different by daylight. The Cyprians were not there for one thing, just the usual collection of hawkers selling bric-a-brac and desperately trying to turn a penny. There was a different man on the coffee stand but I recognised the tall shabbily genteel figure of Ginger Jim at once.

  “By God, Brodie, what happened to you?” He asked as soon as he saw me.

  “I had a meeting with some old acquaintances. The discussion was lively.”

  “It certainly looks that way.” He studied me as if expecting my attackers to leap out of the shadows and begin beating me again. When this didn't happen immediately he calmed down a little and said, “I talked to the people you asked me to and they are agreeable, at least to meeting with you, and hearing what you have to say.”

  “That is good news, Ginger, for both of us.” He gulped at the threat in my voice and then took a drink of coffee to cover that up.

  “Who is it? Who did you talk to?” He looked a little betrayed, as if he'd expected me to know that already, and I had somehow let him down. At this stage though, he couldn't see any harm and telling me.

  “Bart Tobin.” That did not really surprise me. Bart was one of the small select group with the talent and the boldness to have robbed Soames’ house and the fact that he was not working a treadmill in gaol, unlike some of the others, had put him high on my list of possible suspects. I said, “I think that I should very much like to pay Bart a visit.”

  “He said I was to take you to him. Now. If there wasn't anybody with you.” He looked around and as they did not appear to be a hundred policemen lurking in the shadows he must have decided that it was safe.

  “Where is he?”

  “In a crib. In the Dials.”

  “All right, let's go.” I stared at him hard and said, “After the last time I talked to you, I had a little trouble that resulted in what you see now. So let me explain something to you -- you're going to walk in front of me and at the first sign of any trouble I am going to smash your brains out with this iron-headed club.”

  “I never had anything to do with those men, Mr Brodie. I don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't me. There's no need to talk to me like that, Mr Brodie. I don't mean any harm.”

  “That's good, Ginger Jim, because you wouldn't want me to mean you any harm.”

  “You're right there, Mr Brodie. You're very right there.”

  And so we came by circuitous routes to the heart of the great rookery of Seven Dials and made our way through cramped and dingy alleyways to the place where robbers waited. All around us, tall buildings leaned crazily together, casting cold shadows into the alleys.

  At that time of the day, in that part of the Dials, most of the men were sleeping off last night's drink upstairs, or already gone to seek work. The women stood by the pump waiting their turn to get some brown water. Hungry children cried, less hungry children played battledore or shuttlecocks or tried to sell cress or violets. A few costermongers hawked their wares, some of them even resting their trays on a stick in one of the few places in London where they knew a policeman would not move them on.

  As we progressed deeper into the rookery, things got busier. All around us seethed hundreds of poorly clad people, men in fustian, women in rags and sometimes children in no clothes at all save a scrap here or there to preserve their modesty. A few of them tugged at my sleeve and asked for alms. Most of them simply ignored me, and a few scuttled warily away into shadowy passages carrying word of my coming deeper into the maze.

  Tobin's crib was in the deepest, darkest and most noisome parts of the Dials, in a building so gloomy and forlorn that it was abandoned by everyone except members of the criminal fraternity. The stones themselves had a crumbled look. On the lower floors the broken windows had not even been repaired with paper. Hanging around outside was a small gang of urchins, doubtless paid to keep a lookout for the law. They watched me as I came closer and I could tell that one of them was ready to bolt upstairs with the bad news if I turned out to be the police.

  “Is Bart Tobin up there?” Ginger Jim asked the urchin who appeared to be the leader.

  “Who wants to know?” He took off his dented top hat and scratched his thatch of hair. Small things moved in it. He looked about the same age as my Donald but his eyes were decades older.

  “Go upstairs and tell him that Brodie is here, and tell him it's recovery business -- he’ll know what you mean.” Ginger Jim obviously didn't like to take any cheek from street runts and I suspected that this was the only time that he got to throw his weight around.

  “And why would I want to do that?”

  “Because I'll give you a clip on the ear if you don't and so will he.”

  “I don’t see a regiment of bloody hussars behind you,” the urchin said, standing on his tiptoes and squaring up belligerently.

  “I don’t need a regiment to deal with the likes of you, son. And neither will Bart Tobin when he finds out that you’ve cost him money.”

  That seemed to do the trick, for the boy sent the smallest of his gang rushing up the stairs with the news and stood glaring at me, all the while being very careful to keep outside the reach of my cane. Ginger Jim leaned against one of the alley walls and produced a pipe and started smoking it.

  “What happened to your face, Mister?” The tallest of the boys asked.

  “I asked too many stupid questions.”

  The boys looked at me as if considering a rush for my pockets. I lifted the cane and tipped the brim of my hat back with the knob and they got the message. I waited for there was no point in going up until Tobin was ready. It would have been dangerous in fact. I had to give him time to get used to the idea that I was here and prepare himself so that he felt safe.

  A few minutes later there was a bellow, “Brodie, is that you?”

  “Aye, it's me, Bart. I want a word and it might be to your advantage.”

  “Are you on your own? Have you got a warrant?”

  “I'm alone and I don't have a warrant,” I said.

  “Then come up and we'll have a word. Be careful on the stairs, some of them are rotten.” He gave an evil laugh when he said that. “Tell Ginger Jim he can wait down there and keep an eye out.”

  I looked at Jim and said, “You heard the man.”

  It looked to me like Bart Tobin didn't really trust Ginger Jim Matthews and under the circumstances I couldn't blame him. Bart must have been wondering at Ginger's part in all of this and whether the flash geezer had betrayed him.

  Tobin was right about the stairs-- they were old, they were rotten and they wound a long way up around the central well of the building. It was dark in there and damp. There was a smell of mould and sewage in the air and of something else that I could not quite place. You get it in a lot of abandoned buildings. Rats skittered away from me. There were human turds everywhere. Cobwebs touched my face as I made my way up and I imagined spiders crawling down from them onto my shoulders.

  I prodded the stairs with the cane as I went, testing every one of them to see if it would take my weight, for I am a fairly heavy man, and it’s easy enough to break a leg falling through a rotten board. A few had rusty nails sticking through them and lockjaw can set in if one of those spikes you.

  As I made my way up I was reminded of other cribs I had gone into back when I was at Bow Street. A lot of those had held unpleasant surprises for anyone seeking to apprehend their occupants; traps, deadfalls, swinging boards with spikes in them. There was probably a way out of this place over th
e roofs too. Bart would have been a fool to set himself up in any other kind of crib. Billy Tucker’s brother had been laired in such a place on the night he died.

  It wasn't Tobin who was waiting for me at the head of the stairs. It was another man, a rough looking one I didn't recognise. He was above medium height, burly, unshaven, with a big gut. He had a knife in his meaty fist, not big, just wicked looking. I stopped on the landing with the cane held ready and stared at him. He stared back and there was a deadness about his eyes that I did not like. He smiled when he met my gaze in a way that he probably intended to be reassuring but which made my flesh crawl.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “He's a big mournful looking cove all dressed in black. Face like an undertaker that had an argument with his razor. He's on his own though.” Mr Knife wasn't talking to me but to someone in the room beyond.

  “That's Brodie, Frank” said Bart's voice from within. “Let him in and watch the stairs.”

  The man stepped back and motioned for me to go through the doorway. I walked slowly forward and slid through the doorway with the edge of the jamb always to my back so that I could keep an eye on Frank. I didn't want the blade stuck into my kidney and he looked like the type who would do it for amusement.

  “I think you've frightened Mr Brodie, Frank,” said Bart. He lay at the far end of the room, on an old straw mattress, alongside two half naked women, Sarah’s friends no doubt. It had to be two girls, of course, so he could be like Jack Sheppard with Edgeworth Bess and Poll Maggot in Mr Ainsworth’s novel. He was half naked himself, with no shirt or vest on and a white clay pipe hung from the corner of his mouth.

  Bart Tobin did not look like the popular image of a housebreaker. He was quite slender with blonde hair and hawk-like aristocratic features. On a stool beside his bed were several bottles and a pistol which he ostentatiously picked up and cocked and pointed in my direction. I've stared down the barrel of a few guns in my time and it’s never pleasant. This time it was like looking down the muzzle of a cannon. My mouth went dry and I could hear my heartbeat thumping in my ears loud as the drums of that German band.