Rosa smiles ruefully and squeezes his hand. ‘I appreciate you thinkin’ of me, Charley, truly I do. But we’ve been through this afore. You know yourself I make more here in one night than I could make in a week at that sort of a job. I figure that, if I can stick with this for another two years, and don’t lose too many clients, I’ll have enough saved up to start my millinery shop.’
‘But you worked in that line before, my dear, and couldn’t make a living at it.’
‘That’s because the scrawny shrew as owned the shop paid us by the piece – half a bloody crown per hat. Do you know how long it takes to make a decent hat? And of course she turned around and charged the customer at least a guinea.’
Charley throws up his hands. ‘All right, all right. I’m not telling you what to do, I’m just concerned about you, that’s all.’
‘I know y’are.’ She flings the sheet aside and gives him a hug around the neck that fairly strangles him. ‘Not to worry; I’m careful. I have a little girl to think about, after all. If aught happened to me, heaven knows what’d become of Audrey.’
Charley disentangles himself and pulls on his trousers. ‘Well, I suppose Mrs Bramble won’t let in anyone too unsavory. I know I wouldn’t care to try and get past her if she didn’t approve.’
‘No,’ says Rosa. ‘She’s always looking out for us.’ Though she’s smiling, there’s something in that smile and in the tone of her voice that sets off a tiny warning signal inside Charley. It’s not a fire alarm sort of signal, or even a constable’s rattle sort of signal, more like a whispered warning in his ear, hardly worth noticing – except that Charley has spent his whole career learning to listen for those whispers and to heed them.
‘But …?’ says Charley.
‘What?’
‘There’s something you’re not saying. “She’s always looking out for us, but …”’
Rosa sighs. ‘’Tis nothing, most likely.’
‘Why don’t you let me decide that?’ He sits on the bed again, lifts her chin, and looks into her eyes. The eyes, he’s learned, seldom lie.
‘Well, ’tis just … ’tis just this one client. He came earlier this afternoon. There were something about him …’
‘What sort of something?’
‘Well, he were a bit odd-looking to begin with. I mean, he dressed like a swell, and he were flashing a big bundle, but he talked more like a scroof or a street-sweeper. His voice were odd, too – all rough and gratey, like a hand mill grinding grain. And there were something wrong about his neck.’
The faint warning in Charley’s ear becomes more like a stage whisper. ‘Wrong? How do you mean?’
‘It were all stiff-like. Like it hurt him to move it.’
Charley’s eyes narrow with suspicion. ‘Were there any sort of scars on his neck?’
‘I can’t say. He never did take his shirt off. There were a nasty scar on his buttocks, though. I could feel it.’
Charley nods grimly. ‘I know how he came by it, too.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes,’ says Charley. ‘I shot him. With his own revolver.’
TWO
Charley takes a small bound notebook from the inside pocket of his tweed frock coat and flips it open. The information he’s looking for is on the very first page. ‘This fellow you entertained – was he a tall, skinny cove with bulging eyes and coal-black hair?’
‘Aye. And mustaches.’ She puts a hand to her mouth, as if recalling how they prickled her skin. ‘I don’t like mustaches.’
‘He was clean-shaven when I met him, but that doesn’t signify. No doubt he’s trying to change his looks. He can’t change that neck of his, though.’
‘Who is he?’
‘His name, you mean? He has more of those than the Devil does: Thomas Twitter. Tom Twit. Mickey McAdoo. Mike the Mutcher. As best I can determine, he was born Thomas Tufts, but us coppers just called him “Neck.” They say he killed a man in a jealous rage some years back, up in Yorkshire, or it might have been Lancashire, and was hanged for it.’
Rosa stares, open-mouthed. ‘Hanged? But – but—’
‘Don’t worry, he’s not a ghost or a vampire. The coroner pronounced him dead, and they gave the body to an anatomy class to dissect. But the moment the first scalpel broke the skin, he coughed a few times, sat up, looked around, and rasped, “This don’t look like Hell to me.”’
‘Laws! I hope they make sure I’m good and dead before they cut me up!’
Charley runs a hand over her rosy skin. ‘I don’t want to think about that. Anyway, the long and short of it is, they let him go free. You can’t hang a man twice for the same crime, they said. Of course, he’s committed enough crimes since then to be hanged ten times over.
‘When I caught up with him, he was setting fire to a boot shop in Burlington Arcade; a rival boot maker had hired him to burn the place down. He pulled a Colt’s revolver, but I knocked it—’ Charley demonstrates, with an imaginary walking stick, and Rosa gasps – ‘to the ground. Well, he hooked it – meaning he fled – and I had the choice of running him down or putting out the fire. So … I snatched up the Colt’s and I shot him.’ He displays his stiff, crooked trigger finger; he broke it once, or perhaps more than once, while boxing and it never healed properly. ‘I’m not good with handguns, and my aim was a little off. By the time I got the flames under control, of course, he was long gone.’ Charley taps the notebook. ‘He’s at the top of my list. If he shows up here again, you send for me right away.’
Rosa doesn’t reply. She pulls the blanket up to her neck, as though she’s taken a sudden chill.
‘Rosa? You’ll send for me, if he comes back?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I will, Charley.’
‘Is there something more you’re not telling me?’ He tries to lift her chin again, but she pulls away.
‘He just – he just frightened me, that’s all. The things he talked about.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘I – I can’t remember, exactly. I know he were bragging about how much money he’s going to make from some scheme or other. Us whores, we’re a bit like priests, y’know – when they’re with us, men will confess just about anythin’, and then later wish they hadn’t done. I’ve learned not to listen too close.’
And Charley has learned when not to push too hard. Some coppers will try to force a witness or a victim or a perpetrator to talk, but Charley has seen too many of them just close up tight under duress, the way an oyster will when you try to pry it open. ‘Well, if you remember anything more, you write it down, and I’ll come back and see you in a day or two.’
She nods silently. As he’s putting on his greatcoat, she says softly, ‘Are you going home?’
‘No, not in this fog. Besides, it’s too awkward, after coming here. I’ll just go to the office. I often sleep there; I’ve put a cot in the storage room.’
‘I feel a bit sorry for her – your wife. I suppose she must miss you.’
‘I suppose not. Anyway, she doesn’t need me. She’s got her mother for company. When I’m not there, they can discuss all my shortcomings without even having to whisper.’
It wouldn’t surprise Charley if his wife and mother-in-law had their own little notebook, in which the catalog of wrongdoers consists of a single name – his – followed by a list of all the things he does to infuriate and annoy them. At the top of the list, no doubt, is his pipe-smoking habit.
Standing on the steps of Madame M’Alpine’s Seminary, he pulls his meerschaum from the pocket of his greatcoat and fills it from a leather pouch. Then he fishes out one of the paper twists he carries about for this purpose, ignites it from the gas lamp – which, unlike those outside many brothels and introducing houses, has discreet panes of clear glass, rather than red – and lights his pipe.
For a time, he tried using phosphorus matches, but found them a nuisance. Sometimes they failed to light at all, other times just their rubbing against each other was enough to set them ablaze. What
put him off them altogether, though, was meeting Mary, another of Mrs Bramble’s girls. For three years she had worked days in a match factory, and the fumes had eaten away most of her jawbone – phossy jaw, they called it. She had been a pretty girl, and she still attracted a few clients – as long as she kept a scarf wrapped about her lower face.
There’s a cab stand not far off, in Eccleston Street, but he can’t really spare the money. Business has not been good of late; though people trust the police for the most part, private enquiry agents are still looked upon with some suspicion. And anyway, Charley prefers to walk. You can see more that way, even in the fog.
The streets and pavements are slippery with a damp layer of licky – a mixture of soot, dirt, and desiccated horse droppings – but not a trace of snow or ice. It’s been one of the warmest Decembers he can recall. A person would scarcely guess that Christmas is only a fortnight away if it weren’t for the shop windows.
Most are shuttered at this time of night, but he passes a grocer’s shop with windows that are protected by an iron grating. Through it, he can view an embarrassment of edibles, many of which make an appearance only in the weeks leading up to Christmas: great heaps of St Michael’s and Maltese oranges, apples, winter pears, pineapples; edifices constructed from tins of caviar and mincemeat; gemlike jars of raspberry jelly and preserved ginger; boxes overflowing with walnuts and figs, currants and sultanas, bonbons and biscuits.
Charley could live without such stuff – roast beef and beer are more in his line – but he’ll have to present Jane and her mother with a basket of Yuletide delicacies soon, or he’ll fall even farther from grace. No doubt they’ll want a tree as well, to hang the oranges and the candies on, as is the fashion. And good lord, they’ll be expecting gifts; he hasn’t even begun to look.
He walks on. Street lamps are sparse in working-class neighborhoods like this one; there are times when he has to feel his way along, swinging his walking stick to and fro like a blind man, to avoid colliding with walls or with the palings that separate the pavement from the street. The lighted window of the Cat and Fiddle emerges from the fog, like the yellow moon rising behind a bank of clouds. Charley is surprised to find the public house still open; he’d thought it was well past midnight. It turns dark so early this time of year, it plays havoc with a man’s sense of time.
When he steps inside, a dozen heads turn in idle curiosity. Most stare at him blankly, but in every tavern in the West End there are always a few who recognize Inspector Field, for better or worse. Some of those who’ve spotted him quickly duck their heads, not caring to be recognized in turn. Others raise a hand or a pint in greeting. A red-faced, white-haired fellow cries, ‘Blow me, it’s Inspector Bucket!’ Charley grins and waves, not unhappy with the minor celebrity lent him by Mr Dickens’ serial, which concluded only a few months ago.
Sitting at the bar is a uniformed constable whose baby face is unfamiliar, and Charley has a good memory for faces. When the red-complexioned fellow calls out to Charley, the young copper turns, looking startled and clearly embarrassed at being caught neglecting his beat, then quickly downs his drink. Charley notes that it’s not porter or stout he’s having, but an egg flip – minus the brandy, something tells him. Despite the rules, coppers have been known to drink stronger stuff while on duty, especially on a night this raw and damp, but the boy just strikes him as a teetotaler.
Charley prides himself on his ability to read people and to notice details that most people would overlook, even other detectives. Though his years of policing have helped him hone this skill, he first learned it when he was a lad in Chelsea, sitting in the back room of his father’s public house, watching raptly as his mother told fortunes for sixpence a go. Sometimes she used a tarot deck, other times she read tea leaves or palms, whatever the customer preferred.
The method didn’t matter, for the underlying strategy was always the same: It wasn’t truly the tea leaves or the tarot that she was reading; it was the customer. Some things she observed with her eyes – what the person wore, the state of her health, the way she carried herself, how she responded to questions and hints. Other things, his mother simply sensed somehow. But often there was nothing particularly skillful or uncanny about it; she was simply relying on gossip she had gleaned while pouring glasses of gin in the tavern.
By the time he reaches the young constable and lays a hand on his shoulder, Charley already knows half a dozen things about him. First off, he’s from the Midlands somewhere – Derbyshire, most likely, from the way he says to the publican, ‘Thank ’ee, but I mun be up and off.’ He’s no laborer or tradesman, though, as the coppers from that area tend to be. His hands are too soft, and his speech, despite its regional flavor, is more schooled than most. A parson’s son, would be Charley’s guess; that would account for the liquorless egg flip, which he’s even more certain about now that he can smell the boy’s breath. As further evidence, there’s a gold chain visible inside the lad’s coat; he’s unbuckled his collar in the warm room. Charley is willing to wager that, at the nether end of the chain, there’s a crucifix.
He’d also bet any amount that the fellow is neither quite old enough nor quite tall enough to meet the criteria for joining the force; that means he’s clever enough to have got in anyway, and determined enough to have made the effort. The number on his collar – B62 – tells Charley that he’s fresh fish, probably just out of training. That number formerly belonged to Aloysius Egg, who was dismissed a few weeks ago for having the gall to marry what his superiors called a ‘common prostitute’ – though Charley has met the woman, and there’s nothing common about her.
When the boy feels Charley’s heavy hand on his shoulder, he turns again and slides off the stool, hanging his head sheepishly. ‘I was just returning to my beat, Inspector Field.’
‘You know me?’ says Charley, unused to strangers calling him by his real name and not that of Mr Dickens’ character.
‘Eh, everyone knows you, Inspector. You’re a bit of legend, actually.’
Charley laughs. ‘A legend, eh?’
The boy nods, more eager than embarrassed, now. ‘’Twas hearing about your cases and how you solved them that made me wish to join the force.’
‘You’re not confusing me with Inspector Bucket, now?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You’ve read Bleak House, though?’
‘Yes, sir. ’Tis a ripping tale, and Bucket is a gradely fellow. But I want to be a real inspector.’
‘Good for you. First, though, you need to get out there and haul in your quota of drunks and pickpockets.’ He gives the boy a slight shove in the direction of the door. When he’s gone, Charley bellies up to the bar. ‘Good evening, Samuel. A pint of purl, if you’d be so kind.’
The publican warms a glass of beer over a spirit lamp, adds a shot of gin, a spoonful of sugar, and a slice of ginger and plunks it in front of Charley. ‘Good to see you, Inspector. It’s been a while.’
‘Well, I don’t get around like I did when I was with the force. I have to stick close to the office, you know, on the slim chance that a client might find his way there.’ Charley takes a swig of the purl and smacks his lips appreciatively. ‘So far, I’ve been hired to find a ten-year-old boy’s missing dog and to spy on a cove who threw himself under a carriage and then sued the rig’s owner.’
‘What did you find out?’
‘About the dog?’
Samuel laughs. ‘About the injured bloke.’
‘He did the job a bit too well. He can barely move, even when he thinks no one’s watching.’ Charley finishes off his drink, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and places a shilling on the bar. Samuel waves it away.
‘Your money’s no good here, Inspector.’
‘I’m not a copper any more. I’ll pay for my drinks.’
The man shrugs. ‘If you insist.’
‘I do.’ Charley jingles the few coins remaining in his pocket. ‘Can I ask you a sort of a personal question, Samuel?’
&
nbsp; ‘Is this an interrogation, Inspector?’
‘I told you, I’m retired. I’m just a private enquiry agent now.’
‘Well, then, is this a private enquiry?’
‘Not exactly. Only I want to know: What are you getting your wife for Christmas?’
Before Charley can leave he’s obliged to make the rounds, greeting old friends, reminding old foes that he still has his eye on them. By the time he emerges from the Cat and Fiddle, the bells of St Peter’s are tolling midnight – though the fog makes it seem as if the sound is coming from some other quarter altogether. At the same time, his ears catch another, shriller sound from somewhere closer by – the muffled piping of a policeman’s whistle. It’s true, then, what he’s heard: the commissioner is phasing out the heavy old wooden rattle, which never did fit comfortably in a fellow’s pocket and which more than once was seized by a perpetrator and used to bludgeon the arresting officer.
Though the whistle is meant to summon coppers from neighboring beats, Charley knows it won’t carry far in the fog. He plunges into the murk, heading in the direction of the sound, or as nearly as he can tell. He hasn’t gone more than a dozen strides before he collides head-on with someone coming the other way and traveling far too fast for conditions. Charley is a big man, and solid; running into him is no better than running into one of the sides of beef you see at Smithfield Market.
The other fellow lets out a whooshing sound like a blacksmith’s bellows and staggers backward, clutching his chest. Charley catches him by the arm and props him up with very little effort, since the man is about half his size. ‘Sorry, sir; I didn’t see you coming. Are you all right?’ The man gives him a look of alarm, as if he takes Charley for a robber, and tries to pull away. ‘There’s nothing to fear, sir. I’m a detective.’ Not strictly true, of course, but more reassuring than saying I’m a private enquiry agent.
The man doesn’t seem reassured, though; he struggles even harder to break free. ‘I ain’t hurt,’ he groans. ‘Just turn me loose, would you?’
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