Charley’s eyes rove the dimly lighted room, searching for familiar faces; he finds some, but not the one he’s looking for. There’s no point at all, of course, in shouting out, ‘Anyone here seen Neck?’ It would be like asking whether anyone there has stolen anything lately; the only response he’s likely to get is a little raucous laughter and a lot of furtive looks.
Instead, he lays a crown atop what passes for a bar – two planks laid across two barrels – and tells the proprietor, a jolly cove known only as the Earl of Warwick, ‘A glass of Yuletide cheer, sir, for all these fine lads!’ This elicits a chorus of tenors and baritones belting out ‘Hear, hear!’ and ‘Hurrah!’ plus a sole basso roaring ‘A toast! A toast to Inspector Bucket!’
Charley waves his hands aloft to quiet them and, to his gratification, they actually heed him. Though they may flout the law at every opportunity, they also respect it, when it plays fair with them. ‘No, gentlemen, you may no longer call me Inspector. In case you haven’t heard, the buggers threw me out; I’m tending my own backyard now, and not Scotland Yard. I’m what’s known as a private enquiry agent.’
‘What’s that, then?’ calls one of the tenors. ‘You inspect privies, do you?’
More good-natured laughter from all, including Charley himself. ‘I’ve been known to,’ he admits. ‘There was this case, not long ago, where a cove slid down one of the holes in an attempt to recover his wallet, succumbed to the fumes, and drowned in his own shite.’ A true story, though it happened when he was still on the force. He’s rewarded with a satisfying swell of groans and gagging sounds. ‘The case I’m on now is more pleasant, but also more challenging. I’m hoping you men might give me a hand with it.’ The room goes silent, as he knew it would. Respecting the law is one thing; actually helping it solve crimes is another.
‘Not to worry,’ says Charley. ‘I’m not looking to run anyone in. The thing is, I’ve been hired by a mill owner up Yorkshire way. The poor blighter is dying of cancer. He’s going to leave a fortune behind, and his only heir is a son he hasn’t seen in years. Apparently, the lad went off to London and fell in with a bad crowd – so naturally I thought of you lot.’ This prompts a round of laughter, and another round of drinks. ‘Now, if I can crack this case, I’ll come in for a pretty handsome fee – which I’m prepared to share with anyone who can help me find the missing heir.’
‘What’s his name, then?’ asks a man in a faded Royal Navy coat that’s been stripped of its buttons. ‘Not that he’s likely to still be using it.’
Charley consults his little book, just as if this is an actual case about which he’s taken notes, and not a total fabrication – well, almost total. ‘The old man is Gabriel Tufts. Sir Gabriel, in fact. The son started out as Thomas – though, as you say, he could be calling himself most anything now.’ There’s an outbreak of murmuring at the rear of the room. ‘Someone recognize that name?’ calls Charley.
A lanky young man at the farthest table raises his hand. ‘I do, sir. I hail from Yorkshire mysen, and though I dunt know a Sir Gabriel Tufts, I’ve heard the name Tommy Tufts many times. He’s a sort of a legend, up our way.’
‘Oh? How’s that?’
‘Well, years ago, afore I was born, they convicted this Tommy Tufts of murder, and they hanged him. The only thing was, it didn’t take. He survived it somehow, and they let him go free.’
The murmuring starts up again, louder now, and more widespread, and Charley hears the word Neck being tossed about as if it’s a chestnut too hot to hold. ‘You must be joking, gentlemen,’ he says. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting that the heir to Sir Gabriel’s fortune and the man we know as Neck are one and the same?’
‘Well, sir,’ puts in a small, scraggly fellow, ‘I do hear that he’s been bragging about how he’s coming into a good deal of money soon.’
‘Oh, dear,’ says Charley. ‘You don’t suppose he knows about the inheritance already? If he contacts the old man of his own accord, there goes my fee.’ He sighs and drains his cup of ale. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. If tracking down our Mr Neck were a simple matter, I’d have done it long ago, when I was still a copper. Thank you, boys; I appreciate your assistance, even though it’ll likely prove useless.’
Like an actor who’s confident of his skills, he makes a swift and undramatic exit; instead of applause he’s followed by shouts of ‘Good luck, Inspector!’ and ‘Happy New Year, sir!’
He doesn’t get far before he hears footsteps behind him, padding through the mud and slush. Will it be the youth from Yorkshire, or the scraggly sot, or the sailor without a ship? ‘Mr Booket?’ calls a voice. Ah, the lad from God’s Own Country.
Charley turns to him, feigning surprise. ‘It’s Mr Field, actually.’
‘Sorry. Only I thought …’
‘Folk tend to confuse fact and fiction, that’s all. Is there something I can help you with?’
‘Nay, sir. I thought happen I could help you. You see, I know where to find this Thomas Tufts, or Neck, or whatever you may call him.’
‘Oh? You’ve come across him, have you?’ Charley retrieves his notebook and pencil.
‘Aye, sir.’ The young man moves in closer and lowers his voice. ‘You won’t let on it was mysen as told you? I don’t fancy him coming after me.’
‘If I nab him, my lad, he won’t be coming after anyone, ever again.’
‘All right, then. I seed him only yesterday, at a coffeehouse in Mincing Lane.’
‘Near the Customs House?’
‘Aye.’
‘How on earth did you know it was him?’
‘The bloke next to me said so; he used to be part of Neck’s gang, till he got sluffed wi’ it.’
It’s a likely enough story, and Charley would like to believe it – after all, he has no other leads – but there’s something about the lad’s manner, the way he avoids Charley’s gaze, that sets off that tiny alarm. ‘Was he still bandaged up, where I shot him?’ Charley pats his leg.
The boy doesn’t even skip a beat. ‘Aye,’ he says gleefully. ‘He had to use a crutch and all.’
‘That’s curious,’ says Charley, ‘considering I hit him in the shoulder.’
The lad’s face falls. ‘Oh.’
‘You didn’t see him at all, did you? In Mincing Lane or anywhere else.’
‘Nay, sir.’
‘You were just hoping to cozen me out of a shilling or two.’
‘Aye, sir. Seethee, I’ve put nowt in my belly for several days now.’
‘Except for ale, that is.’
‘Only the round you bought. I was in there to get out o’ the weather, is all.’
He’s still stretching the truth, no doubt, but Charley is weary of lecturing lads like him – strong and willing rustics who left their homes and came here to make a mark on the world and were marked by it instead. Besides, he’s only doing what Charley himself does so often – feeding folks a bunch of blarney in order to get what he wants. ‘Well, come along, then,’ he says. ‘We’ll top off all that ale with some coffee and a nice bowl of bean soup.’
There’s a certain sort of copper who likes to badger the staff at small shops and eating establishments, just to show them who’s in charge. Charley has never been one of those; he figures that anyone who runs such a place has trouble enough just making ends meet, without having to put up with overbearing customers.
But the coffee he’s served at the chop house is so undeserving of the name that he can’t bear to let the owner get away with it. Charley’s in a cranky mood already, from having failed to track down his prey, and this just adds fuel to the fire. Still, he doesn’t barge right up to the owner and start berating him. No, he waits until the Yorkshire lad has eaten his fill and departed and the tide of customers is at an ebb; then he takes the portly proprietor aside and politely but firmly demands the name and location of the coffee roaster who supplies him.
Charley has done enough walking for one day; he takes a cab to the roastery, which occupies the top floor of a ware
house near the London Docks. Despite the chill outside, the roasting-room is … well, roasting, and the reason is obvious: In the middle of the floor stands a contraption consisting of a perforated copper drum, roughly three feet in diameter, and beneath it a stove of sorts, filled with glowing charcoal.
There’s a hand crank that rotates the drum, and the muscular fellow turning it is stripped to the waist and sweating profusely. His hair is as black and curly as Miss Fairweather’s and his skin even darker; if hers is the color of a good ale, his is more like a cup of strong Mocha with a dollop of cream. Without slacking his efforts, the man calls, over the hail-like rattle of the tumbling beans, ‘How may I help you, senhor? Forgive me for not stopping; the beans will burn.’ His accent, too, is reminiscent of the best coffee – rich and exotic. No doubt he’s also a product of Brazil.
The accent Charley settles on is more like a cup of Grey’s tea – brisk and a bit tart, very different from the ‘one of the lads’ tone he used back at Rat’s Castle. He perfected this one years ago, doing his impression of Commander Mayne for the amusement of the other Detective Branch boys, and he pulls it out whenever he needs to sound especially businesslike and no-nonsense.
‘I’m opening a dining house,’ he practically shouts, ‘near the Inns of Court. Naturally I want to serve teas and coffee of good quality, but at the same time, I don’t want to spend a fortune. I was told you could accommodate me.’
The fellow holds up his index finger in a ‘one moment’ gesture. He stops the drum, opens a door in the end, and tilts it. The fragrant contents tumble down a chute and into a giant metal bin already half filled with roasted beans. Mopping his brow with a bandana, the coffee man says, in a normal voice, ‘I am sure that we can, senhor. You know that we do only the roasting? You will need to grind the beans yourself.’ He shows his perfect white teeth in a laugh. ‘Well, perhaps not you personally; you know what I am saying.’ Picking up a wooden paddle, he stirs the beans so they’ll cool evenly.
Charley maintains a dour, businesslike expression. ‘Of course.’ When he peers into the bin, the aroma is so luscious and powerful it nearly makes him stagger. ‘You sell these by the pound, do you?’
‘Yes, senhor. One shilling for the lighter roast; one and six for the darker.’
‘Oh.’ Charley backs away from the bin. ‘Don’t you have anything a bit … well, cheaper? Perhaps a – a mixture of some sort?’
The man’s smile quickly fades. ‘No, senhor. We sell only pure coffee.’
‘Indeed? Perhaps I was misinformed.’ He starts toward the door. ‘Oh, well, there are plenty of other roasters in the city.’ He’s assuming that, if he threatens to go elsewhere, the man will change his tune.
He is wrong. The Brazilian just shrugs. ‘You may try them, of course, senhor, but their prices will be much the same. So will the quality of their product.’
‘No chicory or acorns, then? No horse peas?’
‘No, senhor!’ he says indignantly. Then, unexpectedly, the smile returns, but this time it’s more sly and knowing. ‘Ah, I understand now. You are trying to trick me. You are an inspector, não é?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Charley was trying so hard not to look like a detective. Maybe he’s been at it too long; maybe it’s seeped into his skin somehow, like the ink on Mr Mumchance’s hands.
‘From the government, eh?’ says the Mocha Man. ‘We have been hearing for some time that you would begin inspecting coffee and bread and tea and such things. If anyone is adding chicory or horse peas or anything else, it is not the roasters, I promise you.’
Though Charley hasn’t met many Brazilians, he’s encountered coves from a lot of cultures, especially during the Great Exhibition, and as far as he can tell, no matter what their native language, their faces and eyes say pretty much the same things. This fellow is clearly telling the truth.
Charley doesn’t bother enlightening him. There has indeed been talk of passing a Food Adulteration Act, but it hasn’t happened yet; the mills of Parliament grind exceedingly slow. Still, if the coffee roasters want to think he’s a government inspector, so much the better. It’ll keep them honest.
The Inspector buys two pounds of the dark roast, in a pasteboard box, and solicits advice on how best to grind and brew the beans. On the way back to his office, he visits Mr Popper’s pawnshop and comes away with not only a sturdy coffee mill but also a sleek silver-plated biggin pot with a wire strainer.
He spends most of the evening attempting to master the two devices. It begins to look as if Jane was right: Brewing beverages of any sort is beyond his capabilities. In his initial effort, the hot water fails to penetrate the ground coffee that he’s spooned into the strainer; instead it cascades down the sides of the biggin and soaks into some of the faux paperwork on his desk.
Trained detective that he is, he deduces that he’s ground the beans too fine and they’re clogging up the strainer. He adjusts the mill for a coarser grind and tries again. This time, the water escapes faster than farthings through your fingers. After only four more abortive attempts, he manages to get the size of the granules just right. The water drains through in a leisurely fashion, and comes out the other side transformed into a potion so bracing and so beneficial that Dr Benjamin could bottle and sell it as a cure-all.
FOURTEEN
If Inspector Bucket’s Panacea is such a savory success, why in the world does he drop in at the local coffeehouse the next day and order a cup of their ersatz Mocha? And why does he repeat his folly in three other coffeehouses before the morning is out?
Well, truth be told, he doesn’t actually drink more than a sip of the insipid stuff, nor does he add his usual healthy dollop of cream. Instead, he pours each of the servings of so-called coffee into one of the small glass jars he’s brought with him. He labels the samples to show where they came from, secretes them in his greatcoat pocket, and delivers them to the studio of his friend and esteemed colleague, the Scarecrow.
As usual, the photographer looks as though he could use something bracing and beneficial. ‘How thoughtful of you,’ he says, ‘bringing me not just one cup of coffee, but four.’
‘I’m sorry, ’Sam. These are not for drinking; they’re for testing. I’m assuming you have some magical way of determining what’s in these – aside from the small percentage of actual coffee?’
The Scarecrow scratches his sparsely thatched skull. ‘Well, I’d have no trouble if I could examine the ground beans themselves. Analyzing the brew will be a bit trickier. Luckily, there’s sediment at the bottom; I can put that under the microscope. And if I take a little of the liquid and add a drop or two of hydrochloric acid and some potassium ferrocyanide, and then boil it—’
‘Good, good,’ says Charley. ‘You do that. In the meantime, I’ll fetch my grinder and my biffin and make you a cup of the real thing.’
Over the next few days, he divides his time between two very different lines of enquiry, one disappointingly fruitless, the other distressingly successful. The fruitless one involves flushing out all his old informants from whatever hole they’re hiding in and squeezing them for information about Neck. The tool he uses may be a threat or it may be a bribe, whichever seems likely to work best, and sometimes both. All that squeezing yields nothing really juicy, only vague hints and speculations and inventions.
As he wanders about from dead end to dead end, he stops at every coffeehouse and grocer he passes, to collect a cup of Mocha or a bag of ground beans. This is the successful part of the investigation – more so than Charley would like, actually. Whether the Scarecrow runs his tests on the brew or the beans, his findings are equally damning and dismaying: not a single sample proves to be pure Arabica, or even Robusta. Not surprisingly, chicory is the most common contaminant, but the chemist also finds traces of wheat, rye, acorns, and mangelwurzel, not to mention gypsum, coal, clay, lead, iron, tin, petroleum jelly, indigo, and arsenic. With each set of results, Charley is more grateful to Mrs Crumpet for persuading him to brew his own.
>
Thinking of Crumpet’s Coffee-House, of course, leads him to thoughts of Miss Fairweather. She did say that, once he mastered the art of coffee-concocting, he should invite her over for a cup. But did she actually mean it, or was she just making conversation? Well, it scarcely matters, since he has no idea where to find her. Perhaps he could track her down if he tried hard enough; he is a detective, after all. Or perhaps not; perhaps he’d fail as miserably as he has with Neck.
Besides, he can’t afford to spend all his time pursuing his own personal agenda; that won’t pay the rent – which, by the way, is due next week. He’s set aside most of his pension for that purpose, but it’s not enough. Jane would lend him the remainder, of course, most likely even give it to him outright. But he’d sooner throw over the enquiry business altogether, and set up a coffee stall in Lumber Court Market. His wares would, of course, be one hundred percent pure.
But he’s not ready to give up his investigating career just yet. Perhaps it would help to have a business card, like Professor Sledge’s. After leaving the Scarecrow’s studio, he stops in at a stationer’s and orders a hundred cards imprinted with a condensed version of his newspaper advertisement. Then he returns to his chilly office and builds a fire, using as kindling the circulars that make up the entirety of the day’s post.
He hasn’t spent much time at the Holywell Street house lately, but he’ll have to put in an appearance tomorrow; it’s New Year’s Day. Appearance is the appropriate word, since he will only appear to be there. Though his body will be present, his spirit will be elsewhere – rather like a séance in reverse. But of course that’s what matters most to Jane and the mother: appearances. His wife will have invited all her friends – who might be more accurately called acquaintances – to drop by, and they must go away believing, as Jane herself seems to, that everything in the Field household is as it should be.
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