PUFFIN BOOKS
SCARPER JACK
& THE
BLOODSTAINED ROOM
Violent Struggle. Bloody Murder.
Doors and Windows Locked and Bolted.
No Way In or Out. Mystery.
Impossible Crime. Bloody Murder.
MURDER. NUNWELL STREET!
Jack dropped the newspaper and rushed round the end of the houses and along the back alleyway to the shared privy, reaching it just in time before he was violently sick.
On his knees, shaking with nausea and shock, he confronted the truth. There had indeed been a killing.
And he knew where the murderer lived.
Christopher Russell was a postman when he had his first radio play broadcast in 1975, having given up a job in the civil service to do shift work and have more daytime hours for writing. Since 1980, he has been a full-time scriptwriter and has worked on numerous television and radio programmes. Christopher lives with his wife on the Isle of Wight.
Books by Christopher Russell
BRIND AND THE DOGS OF WAR
PLAGUE SORCERER
SCARPER JACK AND THE BLOODSTAINED ROOM
SMUGGLERS
BY
CHRISTOPHER RUSSELL
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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First published 2008
1
Copyright © Christopher Russell, 2008
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
978-0-14-191929-4
This book is dedicated to Londoner Ben
Contents
1 Voices in the Chimney
2 The Impossible Crime
3 Lies
4 The Grapnel
5 Suspects
6 Father and Son
7 Connections
8 Break-in
9 The Painting
10 Collision
1
Voices in the Chimney
‘Hello, son.’
The man on the doorstep smiled. Easy, confident, sure of his welcome. The boy just stared at him. Shocked.
‘Who is it, Jack?’ wheezed a voice from the parlour across the narrow hallway.
‘My father,’ said the boy, still staring. Then he turned from the door, leaving the man he hadn’t seen for three years to follow if he chose.
Arthur Jevons looked up from his chair. The effort of speaking tightened his chest.
‘And what would he be wanting?’ he asked, regarding the man but addressing the boy.
Jack guessed the answer would be to no one’s advantage except his father’s.
‘Tony Tolchard,’ announced the new arrival, with the merest nod of acknowledgement at Jevons. ‘Come to reclaim his son.’
He turned to Jack and sounded hurt; a loving parent spurned by his thoughtless child.
‘I’ve just looked for you at Sparshott’s,’ he said. ‘Why did you leave him? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t know where you were,’ Jack managed to reply.
He’d got over the shock now. His cheeks were burning. He’d known he’d been sold to his first employer, Sparshott. Even at the age of eight, he’d noticed the money changing hands.
‘Sparshott’s the cruellest villain in the business,’ growled Jevons.
‘He says you stole my son from him,’ said Tony, turning a righteous glare in his direction.
‘Rescued him,’ said Jevons firmly despite his wheezing. ‘Rescued him.’
‘That’s noble,’ sneered Tony. ‘One sweep from another.’
‘Sparshott puts his boys up chimneys.’ A coughing spasm interrupted Jevons. Eventually, he recovered. ‘It’s illegal. Perhaps you didn’t know what would happen to your son. Or care?’
‘No one cares more for Jack than I do,’ snapped Tony. Then he shrugged. ‘Life was difficult when we first came to London. After our loss.’ He looked with sad appeal at the woman he assumed was Jevons’ wife, sitting on the other side of the small fire with her collection of silent children. ‘Jack will have told you, ma’am, of the death of his mother and sister.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘I’m man enough, I hope, to admit that in my grief I made mistakes. If Sparshott was a hard master then I’m sorry for it.’
He shrugged again, the subject dismissed, as if selling his eight-year-old child had been nothing to be ashamed of. Jack had been a slave to Sparshott for three years, living in fear, misery and squalor before Mr Jevons had saved him. Now his father was here, acting hurt. Jack could scarcely believe it. His father merely smiled at him and continued briskly.
‘But that’s all in the past. I have a steady job now and decent lodgings. It’s time for me to be a proper father once again. To make amends. So, Jack, fetch your coat if you have one: you’re coming home with me.’
‘Make amends?’ asked Jevons. ‘Or take his wages? Now he’s old enough to earn more. Is that it?’
Tony snorted with contempt. ‘No. But if it was, I’d find him a better job than this.’
Jack didn’t move.
Did he have a duty to this father who had sold him to be put up chimneys and left him to his fate for three long years before he was rescued? Surely, his greater duty was to Arthur Jevons, who had been kind and was now ill. Jack had been well fed and cared for by the Jevons family and was now the strong lad needed here. He looked to his master for guidance. For help.
‘Is that what you desire, Jack?’ The sweep’s tone, like his watery eyes, was as mild as usual.
‘What he desires,’ cut in Tony, ‘or you persuade him to desire at this moment, is of no matter. I’m his father. His legal guardian.’ He didn’t turn to Jack as he spoke again, firmly. ‘Fetch your coat.’
Jack didn’t move, just continued to look helplessly at his master. Eventually, Jevons blinked and gave the slightest of nods. Jack turned towards his father, then stopped and looked back at Jevons.
‘I shall be back at eight in the morning,’ he promised. ‘To help you in Calborn Gardens.’
He glanced defiantly at his father, his face flushed, but received only a bland smile in return. He hurried out.
As they walked down the street
, Tony put a companionable arm round Jack’s stiff shoulders.
‘We shall have good times together,’ he said. ‘Were you ever in a public house?’
Jack shook his head.
His father tutted. ‘But you’re almost a man. You do know what tomorrow is?’
Jack nodded. ‘My birthday,’ he said dully.
‘Your twelfth birthday.’ The correction was cheerily emphatic. ‘And we shall celebrate in proper style. Father and son.’
His father strode on, his arm still round Jack’s shoulder; and the shabby warmth of the Jevons household faded behind them.
As promised, Jack was back at the sweep’s yard next morning, slipping away from his new home before his father was awake. Neither he nor Mr Jevons spoke of the change in Jack’s circumstances as they rode away to Calborn Gardens on the sweep’s horse-drawn cart.
Number twelve Calborn Gardens was a fine terraced house, as tall and elegant as its owner, or at least, its owner’s wife, Mrs Shorey.
She was a regular customer of Jevons the sweep and trusted him. She didn’t hover in the background while he spread his dust sheets and assembled his connecting rods and brushes, but was happy to leave him to get on with it, even when he was working in the upstairs rooms as he was today.
The Shoreys had a son called Rupert, whom both parents referred to in their amiably remote way as Rupe – a shortening that he tolerated rather than enjoyed.
Rupert was an only child and disliked school. He was indulged in this by his mother, who wanted him to be happy. So Rupert had been excused the terrors of boarding school at the age of seven and allowed to attend day school instead. He was excused the terrors of day school by regular if vague illnesses which usually coincided with boxing lessons and gymnastics in the school yard. His father occasionally muttered in a disapproving way but didn’t interfere.
Rupert was at home now, in his bedroom, which was on the first floor, close to the guest room where the chimney sweep and his boy were working. He was reading a book he’d taken from his father’s library downstairs. Mr Shorey was a solicitor and most of his books were boring to Rupert if not actually unreadable, but there was a history shelf on which he could always find something of interest. He liked reading about the past. The past never seemed to involve school.
The bedroom door was open, although it should have been closed to keep out the dust, and Rupert couldn’t help looking out. He rather envied the sweep’s boy: his life was almost certainly free of mathematics tests and fourth-form bullies.
‘Are you having difficulties, Mr Jevons?’
Mrs Shorey was in the guest-room doorway. The enquiry was patient and kindly but Jevons was defensive. A brush had jammed in the upper flue.
‘No, ma’am. Soon be done.’
His voice was thicker than usual. Jack knew the signs. It wasn’t just the soot. Anxiety always made his breathing worse. The job was taking far longer than it should.
‘My husband wonders that you don’t use one of the new machines.’
‘Does he, ma’am?’ wheezed Jevons non-committally, without turning from the fireplace where he crouched. Mr Shorey was always wondering about the new machines. Arthur Jevons couldn’t afford a new machine. He depended entirely on Jack and now was likely to lose even him.
‘Did Elizabeth bring your tea?’
‘No, ma’am, thank you kindly.’
‘She forgets everything. I shall have it sent up directly.’
Jack heard Mrs Shorey rustle away behind them. He was pleased about the tea. Sweeping was thirsty work and this was the only house where refreshment was offered. But he was worried about his master, who suddenly slumped backwards and sat convulsed, struggling to keep a coughing fit politely silent. Sweat sprang from his grimy contorted face. When at last he was able to speak again, his voice was an unintentional whisper. He nodded at the fireplace and the connecting rod just visible.
‘I can’t shift it, Jack.’
‘I’ll do it.’
Jack put a hand briefly on Jevons’ shoulder and moved towards the fireplace.
‘No, Jack, you mustn’t…’
The sweep’s protest was real but feeble.
‘Don’t worry.’ Jack’s reply was also quiet. ‘I’ll get out in the attic – no one will know. I’ll see you downstairs.’
Out on the landing, Rupert was peeping. He watched the sweeping boy’s bare feet disappear up the guest-room chimney.
The flue was narrow but Jack was skinny. A little too tall perhaps: he’d outgrown the stunted tinyness of the natural climbing boy that had so pleased Sparshott, his first master. Instead, he now had a strength that enabled him to writhe upwards in the dark, using his toes almost like claws. The brickwork here was rough but at least cool: the fireplace in the guest room wasn’t used every day and most of the soot had already been scoured away by the brush now jammed somewhere above him.
Jack found and unscrewed the last connection and lowered the rod down the chimney beneath him. He felt Jevons take it and draw it out of the fireplace below. He had a little more room to move in now, with the rod out of the way, and inched his way upwards again, groping above his head for the brush itself, which would be wedged between inconvenient outcrops of brick. As he did so, he heard two voices, muffled but close. Jack listened and soon realized they came from the house next door.
‘So you can help me?’
‘Of course. Anything can be done for money.’
‘How much?’
‘A hundred pounds. Cash.’
There was a brief pause.
‘Very well. But it must be done tonight – before midnight at the latest.’
‘But after dark, I hope? I’m not invisible.’
‘Of course, but as soon as possible.’
‘The address?’
‘Nunwell Street.’
‘Number?’
Jack slipped slightly and didn’t hear the answer clearly. Seventeen? Seventy? Or twenty? Or seven D?
He held his breath but the quiet conversation continued. No one had heard him, or at least, no one seemed to have associated the small sound of falling soot with the presence of a boy, close behind the chimney wall.
‘The money within two days.’
‘Yes. How will you do it?’
‘What’s that to you, as long as he’s dead?’
The other voice didn’t reply immediately and Jack heard no more as the speakers moved to the far end of the room, muttering.
Jack forced himself to climb upwards. He found the brush and wrenched it free, then climbed higher still before slithering downwards into a short, adjoining flue that brought him out into the fireplace of the Shoreys’ attic. What should he do?
The disused attic was empty and stifling. Jack felt the need of fresh air. He opened the window and climbed out, hoisting himself up on to the slates above, climbing to the roof ridge and straddling it, his back leaning against the chimney stack. He usually thought more clearly on a rooftop, though at this moment he was too shocked to think at all. He’d occasionally overheard voices before, from within a chimney. Usually children playing in nurseries. Never murder being planned. He rehearsed the conversation in his head. Hoping to find some other, innocent meaning in the words so that he could laugh at himself for being stupid. But it didn’t work. There was no alternative meaning; no matter how distorted the voices had been through the chimney. Someone was being paid to kill someone else. Tonight.
Rupert had been intrigued by the sweeping boy’s disappearance. There was a fire escape at the end of the corridor near his bedroom and the guest room, and he crept along to it now, pushed open the fire-escape door and emerged on to the small, square metal landing outside. Had the boy popped out of the chimney pot after his brush? Was that possible? Rupert didn’t think so. But he couldn’t see the chimney stack from the fire escape, so he trotted quietly down the iron steps into the back garden and squinted up from there.
Jack heard the footsteps on the fire escape, then saw the Shoreys�
� son in the garden far below, staring up at him. Why was he doing that? Jack felt vulnerable; and unaccountably guilty. He quickly clambered out of sight down the hidden slope of the roof.
At the same time, in another part of London, a ceremony was taking place. A large, well-dressed man was cutting a ribbon. His name was Henry Featherstone.
‘I declare the Prince’s Bridge open,’ he boomed, oblivious to the chilly wind across the water.
The new steel bridge stretched away before him across the River Thames. Soon it would carry a railway, another link in the ever-growing web of lines that radiated from the capital. Railways were the big thing now. They were expensive to build and the companies that built them needed people like Henry Featherstone to lend them money, so they could buy the steel for the tracks and pay the engineers and workmen who laid them. But there was a big profit in railways because they provided cheap, fast travel. Far faster than horse-drawn carts and carriages. Thousands of ordinary people were eager to buy tickets and ride on the new trains. So investors like Henry Featherstone nearly always got their money back and a fat profit as well. Nearly always.
Featherstone smiled to himself. I’ve become like royalty, he thought, cutting ribbons, making speeches. Indeed, he was royalty of a kind. The new kind. Businessmen who led the nation’s progress. And he liked making speeches; not because he liked the sound of his own voice but because he thought that voice was important. One particular newspaper had called him ‘The Voice of the Age’ and he was inclined to agree.
‘Money,’ he now declared, ‘and men who are prepared to invest it, are changing the world. Harnessing steam and gas and coal and steel to ever greater purpose. Building stronger bridges, faster railways, bigger factories, deeper mines, all to the ultimate benefit of not just our fellow countrymen but the whole world. Industry and commerce will bind the nations together more closely than any treaty. Money. Progress. Peace.’
The journalists wrote eagerly in their notebooks. The small invited crowd applauded, including a number of Featherstone’s business friends. Mostly they didn’t resent their extrovert, self-appointed leader. They were in his shadow but accepted that he was a larger-than-life man with the power to inspire. And those he inspired were more likely to invest money: in their ventures as well as his own.
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