‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Adam said, raising his hat. ‘Perhaps you can help me.’
They looked at one another, as if surprised by his ability to speak.
‘Wotcher want, cully?’ the baccy-chewer asked.
‘I am looking for a young woman.’
‘Ain’t we all?’ the man said.
‘A very particular young woman. This one here.’ Adam held out the photograph to the two men.
They gazed at it, the man with the pipe leering over the shoulder of his companion. ‘Pretty face,’ he said, with the air of a connoisseur of female beauty. ‘She ain’t got much flesh on ’er ’aunches, though.’
‘Well, you know what they say, cully,’ his friend remarked. ‘The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat. I’d crack ’er tea-cup and no mistake.’
‘She ain’t goin’ to give you the time o’ day, Hobbs. Not a looker like her.’
‘I’ve had better-lookin’ than ’er.’
‘Garn! You ain’t telling me that you’ve fit end to end with anything like this girl!’
‘Dozens of ’em. May my bleeding eyes drop out if it ain’t the truth, cully.’
‘May your bleeding cods drop off, more like.’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, please.’ Adam waved the cabinet card in front of Hobbs and his friend. ‘I need only to know if you have seen this young lady in the theatre. Or in the neighbourhood.’
The two men looked at one another. The desire to continue boasting of their encounters with the opposite sex was strong but it was counter-balanced by the feeling that, in this case, it might be easiest just to tell the truth. They shook their heads.
Adam sighed. Showing them the photograph had been a long shot. He slipped it back into the inside pocket of his well-tailored jacket.
‘I seen ’er,’ a voice said. It belonged to a shrivelled, bony man in clothes several sizes too large for him who had been loitering on the edge of the group as Hobbs and his companion blustered and bragged. ‘I seen another pitcher of ’er.’
‘Are you certain, sir?’ Adam took the cabinet card from his pocket once more. ‘Are you certain it was this young woman you saw?’
The bony man reached out a grubby hand for the photograph. Reluctantly, Adam allowed him to take it. The man peered at Dolly’s face, wheezing as he did so. ‘Sure as eggs is eggs,’ he said. ‘Mate of mine ’ad pitchers of dozens of judies. This one ’ere was one of ’em. She looked a bit different then, mind.’ He began to laugh throatily but was suddenly overcome by a coughing fit. He turned away and spat on the floor.
‘Different?’ Adam was puzzled. ‘You have just said it was the same young woman.’
‘It were.’ The man had ceased coughing but his voice was croaky. ‘I never forget a face. Nor a judy’s body.’ He handed back the photograph and launched himself into more rasping laughter. ‘She were different cos she’d dropped ’er drawers. She was naked as the day God made ’er.’
‘You have seen a study of this lady in the nude?’
The man nodded. ‘Quite a study she was, an’ all.’
‘Where was this? Who was your friend? And where did he obtain his photographs?’ Adam was surprised to find himself angered by the thought that some backstreet idlers had been gloating over a picture of Dolly au naturel.
The bony man, taken aback by the asperity in Adam’s voice, retreated a pace or two. ‘Ain’t so much a friend,’ he said. ‘More of an acquaintance.’
‘What is his name?’
‘I ain’t sure. Bert something.’
‘And how would Bert something have come into possession of these photographs?’
‘How the ’ell would I know?’ The man was becoming indignant. ‘Look, mister, I was jest tryin’ to be helpful. I don’t know where he got ’em. These pitchers of naked judies is everywhere.’
Adam was about to ask further questions but the man turned and walked quickly into the crowd. Adam took a step forwards, as if to follow him, but realized that it would be futile.
‘The cove’s right, guv,’ Quint said. ‘There’s thousands of dirty pictures out there. Millions maybe.’
‘How can we discover who took the one of Miss Delaney?’
Quint looked at his master and shrugged. ‘Prob’ly we can’t. Anyway, we got other things to worry about.’ He nodded towards the stage.
A delegation was heading in their direction. It did not look to be a friendly one. Beasley, flanked on one side by the huge Grimston and, on the other, by the cauliflower-eared Charlie Wethers, was making his way across the room.
The three men came to a halt in front of Adam and Quint. ‘’Oo the blue blazes is this pair of muttonheads?’ Grimston asked in a tone that did not suggest friendliness.
‘I ain’t got no idea, Bill,’ Beasley said. ‘They was askin’ questions afore the show, that’s all I know. About some chit of a girl.’
‘Questions?’ The large man was outraged. ‘There ain’t no call for questions ’ere. What you mean coming ’ere with questions?’ He jabbed a fleshy, sausage-like finger towards Adam.
The young man took a step back. He did not wish to become involved in a brawl, but he was not prepared to be prodded in the chest by an overweight baritone. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, holding up his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘There is no cause for disagreement. My man and I were merely making enquiries about a girl who has gone missing. Her friends are anxious to find her.’
‘Bleedin’ young toff,’ Grimston snarled. ‘Coming out east to look down yer nose at us. I ought to set Charlie ’ere on you.’
The former prizefighter made an odd, strangulated bark, like a terrier straining to get at rats, and took a step forward.
Adam took another step backwards and continued to make soothing noises.
‘’Oo’s this bleedin’ tart you’re so interested in?’ Grimston growled, punching his right fist into the palm of his left hand. ‘Sounds like trouble to me. If you’re after trouble, we can give it to yer all right. In bucketloads.’
A space had grown around the group as the drinkers at the beer stall realized that a fight might be in the offing and shuffled out of the way of those who might be doing the fighting.
‘We want no trouble, Mr Grimston,’ Adam said. ‘We are merely—’
‘Sod you, you little ’alfpenny swell.’ The singer interrupted him. ‘I ain’t interested in ’earing any more of your gab. Put ’em on the street, Charlie.’
Wethers took a step forward.
‘Watch out, guv,’ Quint shouted. ‘’E’s got a chiv.’ A knife with a vicious-looking blade had indeed appeared in the old prizefighter’s right hand. Clearly he no longer trusted the power of his fists alone to impose his authority. Quint moved with sudden and decisive speed, lifting his leg and booting the man firmly in the crotch. Immediately Wethers sank, howling, to the floor. He dropped his knife, which skittered away across the floor.
Before either of his friends could react, Adam stepped to his left, seized hold of one of the wooden benches on which the audience had been sitting and propelled it in the direction of Grimston and Beasley. It struck the larger man on his knees, making him yelp with pain and anger.
Adam and Quint exchanged a quick glance. They turned as one and ran for the exit into Whitechapel High Street.
* * * * *
‘Not the friendliest of places, Whitechapel,’ Adam remarked.
‘There’s worse out east,’ his servant replied.
The two men had passed Aldgate Pump and were making their way down Leadenhall Street towards Cornhill. The sudden scuffle with Grimston and his cronies had exhilarated both of them, and they were walking with a definite spring in their step.
‘Why, I wonder, was Grimston so swift to take offence?’ the young man a
sked.
‘Prob’ly thought you was out to peach him for selling liquor. A penny will get you a pound that ’e ain’t got a licence to be flogging beer.’
‘What about the man who claimed to have seen Dolly in the revealing photograph?’
Quint shrugged. ‘Maybe ’e did, maybe ’e didn’t.’
‘He was a dirty and dishevelled rogue, was he not?’ Adam said. ‘His clothes looked as if they were made for someone else. And he had surely been wearing them to bed the previous night.’
‘’E ’adn’t ’ad a bath since Balaclava, if that’s what you mean,’ Quint said. ‘And I ain’t too sure he’d got a bed to go to. Not unless you count the twopenny rope.’
‘The twopenny rope?’
‘In the cheap padding-kens. They just sling a rope between two hooks and the poor buggers hang over it.’
Adam looked aghast. ‘How on earth do they sleep in such a position?’
‘Most of ’em don’t. Mind you, some of ’em are so bloody corned, they’d sleep if they was standing up to their chops in horse crap.’
Not for the first time in Quint’s company, Adam was suddenly aware of vast realms of London life of which he knew little or nothing. He tried to think of what it must be like to have no bed in which to rest one’s head each night, but his imagination baulked at the prospect. It was too far outside his experience. He could only conjure up nights under the stars in European Turkey, and those had been rather pleasant experiences. Sleeping rough in London streets must be very different.
‘These daguerreotypes of women in the nude,’ he said, returning to the original subject. ‘They are sold under the counter in shops throughout town, are they not?’
Quint grunted in agreement.
‘And yet the sale of them must surely be against the law?’
The servant made another noise, perhaps indicating uncertainty about the legal status of such pictures.
Adam continued his train of thought aloud. ‘If they are illegal, then the police must be interested in the places that sell them and the photographers who take them. They must have knowledge of both. And we have a friend at Scotland Yard, do we not?’
‘I ain’t got no friends among the peelers,’ Quint said, with some vehemence. ‘Anyways, I thought you said your toff chum didn’t want the blues to know anything about this girl.’
‘There is no need to tell Inspector Pulverbatch anything much about Dolly.’
‘Didn’t we see enough of that bleeder Pulverbatch last year?’ Quint asked.
Adam ignored his servant’s question. ‘We shall invent some story to explain our interest in her.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We shall say that she is your niece.’
‘I ain’t got no niece.’
‘That she has run away from her respectable home in Peckham and that your sister is worried to death at the thought of what might have happened to her.’
‘I ain’t got no sister.’ Quint’s tone had become quite aggrieved.
‘Particularly since word has reached her that her poor child has fallen into bad company and that she is in danger of losing her virtue. She has been obliged to pose for the most disgraceful daguerreotypes. Your sister is worried half to death.’
‘I tell you, I ain’t got no sister nor no niece.’
‘We are going to speak to our old friend Pulverbatch,’ Adam continued, taking no notice of Quint’s protests, ‘in the hope that he might be able to point us in the direction of the black-hearted villain who is preying upon the innocence of this sweet girl.’
‘Why can’t it be your bleedin’ niece who’s posing in the buff?’
‘That is not very likely to be the case, is it? The inspector would not give credence to such a story.’
‘Why the ’ell not?’
It was Adam’s turn to sound aggrieved. ‘No relation of a gentleman such as myself would be so far reduced in circumstances that she would be obliged to remove her clothing for money.’
‘But my niece and sister’d be as naked as an Indian’s back as soon as you showed ’em a silver sixpence, I suppose.’
‘I said nothing about your sister posing for such photographs, Quint. Merely that she was worried about her daughter’s virtue.’ Adam was growing exasperated. ‘In any case, the question is entirely hypothetical. We have already established that you have neither sister nor niece. Cease making difficulties. I shall write to Pulverbatch as soon as I get back to Doughty Street.’ The young man picked up his speed as they reached Cheapside. Quint fell into a grumpy silence.
The two men continued up the street, servant a pace behind master. The London evening crowds swirled about them. When the vast bulk of St Paul’s was silhouetted against the moonlit sky on their left, Adam came to a halt and turned to Quint, who had also stopped, and was staring moodily into the middle distance. ‘There is no need for you to accompany me to Doughty Street, Quint.’ Adam, aware that he had offended his servant by impugning the virtue of his non-existent relatives, attempted to speak in a conciliatory tone.
Quint merely grunted.
‘If you wish to take some time off, I shall not need your services before breakfast tomorrow.’
Quint grunted again.
‘A drink, perhaps? Are there not pubs hereabouts where you would be a welcome figure at the bar?’ Adam was aware that there were few, if any, streets in the capital where Quint was not close to a hostelry of which he was a sometime patron.
‘There’s the Jolly Waggoners,’ Quint conceded. ‘Off Carter Lane. It’ll be open till after midnight. I could mebbe find time to sink a pint or two of their pale ale.’ He spoke as if by doing so, he would be bestowing a favour not only on the landlord of the Jolly Waggoners, but on Adam as well.
‘Well, there you are,’ his master said. ‘The Jolly Waggoners it is. And I shall make my way back to Doughty Street alone. I shall see you at eight in the morning.’
Quint still looked unconvinced.
‘For God’s sake, go and have a drink, man,’ Adam said. ‘Enjoy yourself whilst you can. We shall have plenty of work to do in the next few days.’
His manservant said nothing but nodded briefly, like a man acknowledging a distant acquaintance across a crowded room, and disappeared into the night.
* * * * *
‘Your name Carver, guv?’
Ten minutes had passed since Quint had left him. Adam had thought briefly of hailing a cab but it was a fine night and the prospect of a walk had been a pleasant one. He had strolled along Newgate Street and turned down Snow Hill, heading for Farringdon Road. As he approached the junction with Cock Lane, a man standing in a doorway addressed him.
The crowds that had been thronging Cheapside had been left behind, and there was no one else in sight.
‘Who wishes to know?’ Adam asked, peering into the dark.
‘Summ’un with a friendly message for ’im.’
The man was tall and broad, dressed in a dark greatcoat and a long muffler which was looped several times around his neck. He was holding a stick with a silver top which glinted in the moonlight. The top was shaped, Adam could see, into the likeness of some animal’s head. A fox, perhaps? The young man clutched his own walking cane a little tighter.
‘Well, perhaps you should deliver it, sir, and then we can both be on our different ways. My name is Carver, but it is rather late in the evening to stand here and exchange pleasantries.’
‘Oh, I’ll deliver it right enough, guv.’ The man laughed unpleasantly.
Adam was about to speak again but he had no chance. He was struck suddenly from behind and staggered a few steps towards the doorway.
‘You ain’t felled ’im, you fool,’ the man in the greatcoat hissed.
Adam was struggling to recover his balance. Greatco
at held his fox-head stick like a club and swung it into the young man’s legs. Adam cried out with pain and was thrown to the ground. The unseen assailant behind him seized the collar of his jacket and began to haul him into a narrow alleyway that ran between the buildings at the beginning of Cock Lane.
Adam, more than half dazed, was unable to do much to resist. He threw a couple of feeble punches, which the man easily evaded; he tried to kick out his legs, but they seemed to be unwilling to obey the instructions from his brain. He was pulled into the alley and thrown, half lying and half sitting, against a brick wall.
Greatcoat knelt by his side. With a flick of the wrist a knife blade appeared in the man’s hand. He held it against Adam’s throat. ‘Now, you want to hold yourself very still, guv. One slip and this ’ere chiv’ll be right through your neck.’
Even in his half-stunned state, Adam realized that he should obey the man. ‘What the devil do you want, sir?’ he whispered. ‘Take the money from my purse if you must.’
‘Well, I might at that,’ Greatcoat said, the knife in one hand still at the young man’s throat. ‘Seeing as ’ow you invited me to do so.’ He used his other hand to rummage in Adam’s jacket. He found the purse and pocketed it. ‘’Owever, that ain’t the main reason why my pal and me stopped to talk to you.’
‘You have my money. What more do you rogues want with me?’
‘Like I sez, cully, a nice friendly word. A message from someone what ’as your best interests at ’eart.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘You’ve been asking a lot of questions about some tart named Dolly Delaney, ain’t you?’
‘I have no notion of what you mean.’
‘Oh, I think you do, guv. I think you know exackly what I mean. Now, my friendly message is this. You can forget all about Miss Dolly Delaney. You ain’t ’eard of ’er. You don’t want to ’ear of ’er. And you partickly don’t want to be a-looking for ’er. You got that?’
‘I am perfectly capable of understanding simple English sentences.’ Adam was recovering from the sudden assault. Any fear he had felt when initially attacked was being replaced by fury that these brutes should dare to knock him to the ground. ‘Even when spoken in your Cockney cant.’
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