Jack liked to think he could too, given the chance, and felt a slight pang of irritation. What did Rupert know about such things?
‘You must go back to the roof now,’ urged Rupert. ‘If there is a proper hole under those tiles, we’ll have solved the impossible crime.’
We? thought Jack.
‘Let’s meet again tonight, shall we?’ Rupert suggested. ‘When you’ve been to Nunwell Street. How about eight o’clock on the fire escape?’
‘So how’s that handsome young man of yours today?’
The barmaid handed Tony another pint of beer as she enquired. They’d discussed the murder and agreed it was dreadful. Evie was ready for a more cheerful topic.
‘Oh, fine, fine,’ chuckled Tony.
He was enjoying the freedom to be in the Cap and Cockerel in the afternoon; to be unemployed yet still paid. He’d forgotten to bring the card that Richard Featherstone had given him. Evie could read. But he’d see Jack again this evening and smooth things over. In the meantime, he still had a last few sovereigns to get through. He laughed happily.
‘He did it proper. Crushers picked him up in the street, sick as a dog. Spent the night in a cell.’
‘Chip off the old block then, eh?’
‘Absolutely,’ agreed Tony, missing the irony. ‘Absolutely. Clever too. Can read y’know. Oh yes. And wonderful bold. Climb anything. I’m going to put him to a proper trade. Put him on the buildings, probably. Or the railways, the new stations and tunnels and suchlike. There’s money there. Good money. Put a stop to this chimney-sweeping nonsense.’
He emptied his mug and pushed it back towards Evie for another refill. ‘Have one yourself,’ he said, fishing the sovereigns from his pocket.
‘Still flush then?’ observed Evie, taking the coin he offered.
Tony slipped the rest back into his pocket. ‘A little deal I did,’ he said, and winked at her as she handed him his pint. ‘Private like.’ He chuckled and took another long drink.
Unnoticed behind him, a man in a large hat and coat listened to the talkative caretaker.
Nunwell Street was not as deserted as the last time Jack had been there. Far from it. A cordon of policemen at either end held back curious sightseers; hopeful journalists waited eagerly for any scrap of information they might be thrown. Other policemen were meticulously searching not just the railed frontage of every building in the street, but also the pavement and even the street gutters. Jack kept well back but still heard the respectful, whispering hush as the bystanders saw Richard Featherstone emerge from number seventeen and get into his carriage.
Gradually, towards dusk, the crowds thinned and finally only the policemen were left. A sergeant dismissed all but three of them and one of these positioned himself outside the front door of the dead man’s office.
Jack made his way unseen to the drainpipe at the back that he’d used the night before. From there he climbed stealthily across the roof ridges to the valley above number seventeen.
It wasn’t as late or as dark as on his previous visit and he was able to see the broken tile quite clearly as he eased himself down towards it. But visibility brought disappointment. The tile he’d stumbled on and the loose ones around it hid no secret: there was no hole beneath them. No one had climbed down through the roof into Featherstone’s office.
Jack turned away and began to retrace his careful steps. Then, as he did so, he noticed something else. Something lodged in the wide gutter at the rear of the building. He slithered quickly down towards it.
Too quickly. Sudden voices down in the lane behind Nunwell Street alarmed him. He knew he’d made a noise, and froze. After a few seconds, he peeped over then ducked down flat again. The two patrolling policemen were in the lane. Looking up towards him. Jack stayed still. He heard their boots and then the sharp rap of a doorknocker across the lane. Peeping over again, Jack saw the caretaker of the building opposite open the door a crack and peer out at the policemen.
‘Sorry to trouble you, sir. Could we possibly have a look out of your top-floor window?’
They wanted to look across. They would see him. The find that Jack had scrambled down to was now almost touching his nose. It was hard and metallic, with a narrow shaft and iron hooks. A grapnel. When he heard the policemen go indoors, he quickly picked it up. The iron hooks were neatly hinged and when Jack squeezed them they folded flat against the shaft. He slipped the grapnel into his sack and crept away towards the drainpipe, low and swift as a spider.
Constable Downing gazed across at the empty roof of seventeen Nunwell Street.
‘Not even a pigeon,’ he grunted at Constable Adams beside him. ‘You’re hearing things.’
Adams shrugged. ‘Better tell the Colonel anyway. Ignore nothing, remember?’
Downing grunted again.
Colonel Radcliffe was pleased. He congratulated them both on their diligence. But that was the end of it. He’d already examined the roof space of number seventeen himself. Crawled beneath the rafters for evidence of entry from above. There was none. And none in the adjoining walls of numbers fifteen and nineteen. It was a favourite trick of patient burglars to bore through party walls. But not this time. No one had come at Featherstone from next door, any more than they’d come at him through the roof.
Slowing down when well away from Nunwell Street, Jack listened to a church clock chiming. Seven. Still an hour before the rendezvous with Rupert. He thought of the girl in the cell, April, her rough kindness and undernourished face. Her silk handkerchief was soaking in the bucket in his father’s backyard with the rest of Jack’s clothes. It was probably ruined. He still felt guilty about it. And he had his birthday gift, his father’s sovereign, in his pocket. He headed for London Bridge and Deptford.
He found Primrose Court eventually. There were no primroses, just dirt and suspicion and listless faces lolling around crowded doorways.
Nobody spoke but someone pointed him towards a house at the end of the court with more paper and rags in the windows than glass. A padding ken, the lowest of low lodging houses, where a bed, or a share of one, could be had for twopence a night.
The proprietor bellowed upstairs and April appeared. She didn’t seem pleased to see Jack.
‘What d’you want?’
Jack shrugged awkwardly. He felt he was intruding. ‘To pay you back. For being kind last night.’
He held out the sovereign, half expecting her to refuse, but her fingers snatched and closed over it like a bony little trap. She didn’t say thank you.
Jack couldn’t help his eyes flickering around the dismal, threatening surroundings. His life was hard but not this hard. People brushed past him, in and out, giving him glances as if assessing his value. He wasn’t worth robbing now he’d parted with the sovereign, and he hoped they could tell.
‘Mostly thieves here,’ said April matter-of-factly, as if reading his thoughts. ‘But it ain’t so bad. Only fifteen bodies in our room, and me and Gran have a bed to ourselves.’
Jack nodded. ‘Wish her well for me.’ There seemed nothing else to say. He made to leave.
‘You was right then. You did hear murder being planned.’
Jack stopped and turned, surprised that she remembered what he’d said in the cell.
‘Yes.’
‘Or was that how you got your bang on the head – when Featherstone put up a fight?’
Jack was shocked. ‘You can’t think I did it?’
April shrugged. ‘There’s enough in here who’d have been glad to. There’s rumours there was money in his desk.’
Jack stared at her fist, still clenched round the gold coin; the one of many gold coins suddenly in his father’s possession.
‘Who says that?’ he demanded sharply. ‘I’ve not heard it.’
April merely shrugged again. ‘Who knows who ever starts a rumour? What you got in there?’ She’d noticed the sack.
‘The thing I was hit with, I think. It was on the roof.’ He glared at her. ‘But what’s it to you? If you
think I did the murder?’
He turned to leave but she tugged his shirt.
‘Course I don’t. You could never have done for Featherstone. He’d have wiped the windows with you. Show me.’
She nodded at the sack. Jack relented, but as he took it from his shoulder April stopped him and glanced round warily.
‘Not in here, though,’ she said and walked out past him, heading towards the river.
The tide was out and the muddy beach glistened in the fading twilight.
‘Tread where I tread,’ instructed April. ‘There’s quicksand.’
Jack followed cautiously. If she didn’t already have his sovereign, he’d have suspected she was planning to rob him.
When she felt she was far enough from eavesdroppers, April stopped.
‘Now show me.’
Jack took his find from the sack. April turned it over in her hands. The hooks were still folded flat against the shaft. She flicked her wrist and the hooks sprang open, like an umbrella.
‘Bet you don’t know what it is,’ challenged Jack.
‘It’s a grapnel,’ said April simply. ‘I’ve seen them at the docks. You think this is what hit you?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think there was anyone else on the roof holding it.’ He was eager to explain now. ‘I think it was thrown. From the ground.’
‘What, thrown at you deliberately?’
‘Maybe not. Maybe that was just my bad luck.’
‘So why else would anyone have thrown it?’
‘I don’t know that either. But there’s a first-floor window at the back, directly under where I found this.’
‘The windows were all locked, though,’ said April. ‘According to the newspapers.’
Jack dug a big toe into the cool mud.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, deflated. ‘So this proves nothing.’
There was a brief pause. April gave him a sidelong, rather calculating glance. ‘Windows can be locked from the outside,’ she said with a shrug.
‘What?’ Jack was startled.
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘How? How’s that possible?’
April didn’t reply. Instead, she asked: ‘Will there be a reward? He was rich, so his family must be too.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. It had never occurred to him.
‘But if we could find out who did it,’ continued April, ‘and tell his son, he’d give us a lot of money, surely. He ought to.’
Jack looked at her. ‘He might, I suppose.’
He paused then put the grapnel back in the sack.
‘I have to show this to someone else. D’you want to come?’ He looked up again. ‘You might get some food.’
Although being underground in a sewer held no terrors for April, Jack could soon tell she was afraid of heights. The garden wall in Calborn Gardens wasn’t that high, but by the time he’d helped her to the top of it she was trembling and her breathing was shallow. She clung to the coping stones like a limpet while Jack jumped down into the garden.
‘Lower yourself down, then drop,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll catch you.’ Nothing happened. ‘April, hurry.’
There was a whimper and scrabbling above, then she fell on top of him. But she picked herself up quickly and shook herself free, too proud to take his offered hand.
Jack led the way to the fire escape. April paused for a moment, staring down at the warm firelight in the basement as they crept past, and breathing in the smell of proper food baking. She thought of the very different Primrose Court and hoped her gran was safely asleep.
Rupert was waiting anxiously at the top of the iron stairs.
‘Who’s this?’ He stared at the newcomer.
‘April,’ said Jack. ‘I met her in a police cell.’
‘Gosh… You’d better come inside.’
Rupert ushered Jack and April into the passageway then closed the fire-escape door behind them.
‘Shush now,’ he whispered, and hurried softly along the carpeted corridor. Jack and April followed. Rupert showed them into his room and closed the door. April just stood a moment, overwhelmed by the opulence and cleanliness of a schoolboy’s room. All this for one person.
Rupert had taken the precaution of spreading newspaper again.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, rather embarrassed, indicating for his visitors to sit on it. ‘Only Ma doesn’t miss a thing. I’ll clear it away when you’ve gone.’
Jack and April didn’t mind. They sat on the newspaper, April still staring about her.
Rupert perched on the chair by his desk and leant forward eagerly.
‘Did you get on the roof ?’ he asked Jack.
‘Yes. But your idea was wrong. There’s no big hole, no damage at all under the tiles. Even the scaffolder couldn’t have got in that way.’
‘Oh.’
For a moment Jack took a mean little satisfaction in Rupert’s disappointment then chided himself for it.
‘But I found this in the gutter.’ He pulled it from the sack and gave April an acknowledging glance. ‘It’s called a grapnel. We think it’s how the murderer got in, but we haven’t worked it out properly yet.’
We this, we that. It sounded to Rupert as if Jack and the girl were bowling happily along without him. He tried not to look even more hurt.
‘See this?’ Jack was pointing at an iron ring at the end of the grapnel shaft. ‘A rope could have gone through here – not tied in a knot, just threaded like cotton through a needle, so when he’d finished he could pull it out again and leave no sign.’
‘Sign of what?’ asked Rupert.
‘The rope. The murderer could have thrown the grapnel so it stuck in the gutter… The rope threaded through this ring here would have hung down to the ground. Then it would have been easy as anything to climb up the rope to a window.’
‘What window?’
‘There’s one at the back on the first floor,’ said Jack. ‘Then, when he climbed down again, all he had to do was pull the rope out.’
‘But what about the grapnel?’
‘He wouldn’t have worried about it. No one would be able to see it from the ground.’
Rupert screwed up his face. Jack wondered for a moment if he didn’t understand or was just being difficult because it wasn’t his idea. It was neither.
‘But surely that thing wouldn’t hold a man’s weight,’ objected Rupert.
‘Come outside and I’ll show you.’ Jack jumped up, determined to prove his theory.
Rupert reached the door before him and peeped out of the room. He nodded and they padded quickly and quietly along the passage to the fire escape. Outside, bright moonlight silvered the rooftops and the fire escape itself. Jack removed the frayed length of thin cord he wore wrapped a couple of times round his waist as a belt and threaded it through the iron ring. He hitched his trousers up hard. They felt a bit loose round his middle and he hoped they wouldn’t fall down. He stared up at the roof then down again at the grapnel in his hands.
‘My belt’s not long enough to reach from here,’ he whispered, and trotted up the next flight of iron stairs to the attic level.
Rupert and April stared up after him. They watched him lean back against the iron railing, arm outstretched, then deftly toss the grapnel upward. Its metal hooks glinted in the moonlight as it arced into the sky, and the cord trailed for a moment like a kite tail. The hooks clattered briefly but noisily on the slates before sliding and sticking fast in the gutter.
‘Ssshhh!’ Rupert was aghast. They all stood quite still for a whole minute but no parent appeared to demand what was going on.
Jack had to jump to catch hold of the two dangling ends of cord. He grabbed them and tugged hard, testing that the grapnel was firmly lodged, then hauled himself hand over hand up the cord, with his feet braced against the house wall.
‘See,’ he whispered down at Rupert. ‘It would hold an elephant.’
‘I believe you. Now come down.’
Jack hadn’t finished
his experiment yet.
‘Imagine this is the back wall in Nunwell Street,’ he continued.
Rupert nodded anxiously. April wasn’t anxious for Jack. She just wished she too could hang like a spider on a thread.
Jack climbed a little higher. It wasn’t exactly like Nunwell Street. There the grapnel had caught directly above a window. Here the nearest window, the attic window, was some way to his left. He swung the rope from side to side like a clock’s pendulum, reaching out with his foot until he could gain a hold on the sill.
‘Don’t fall,’ pleaded Rupert.
Jack smiled to himself. The gutter was solid. There was no danger of falling. He had both feet on the window sill now and, taking his weight on his toes, he jerked the cord so that the grapnel moved along the gutter and he could hang directly in front of the glass.
It was a sash window. Like those at Nunwell Street. To open it you had to pull the bottom pane upwards until it slid behind the top pane. Holding on to the grapnel cord with one hand, Jack tried with the other to raise the sash. It wouldn’t budge. He gripped the sill even harder with his toes, tied his cord under his armpits to support him, and heaved again with both hands. Still nothing happened. Something was pressing down, preventing any upwards movement at all. Despite April’s jibe about him being used for wiping windows, Jack knew he was no weakling. A grown man would have had no more success. Entry was impossible without breaking the glass.
‘Someone’s coming!’ Rupert’s whisper was loud and urgent. ‘I think it’s Erskine!’
‘Scarper, Jack!’ hissed April. ‘Quick!’
Jack heard two sets of feet scampering back indoors somewhere beneath him. There wasn’t time for him to shuffle the grapnel back along the gutter to the fire escape. Instead, he pulled himself up the cord hand over hand and scrambled on to the roof, just as the artist let himself into next door’s garden through the back gate. It was a rare clear night and the garden was peaceful. Erskine looked up appreciatively at the brilliant stars and shining disc of moon. He paused. There was something on the roof. Crouched against a chimney. Or was it somebody? For a moment Erskine thought it was the sweep’s boy from the railway site, but the creature slid silently out of view behind the chimney, moving as gracefully and stealthily as a cat. Erskine stared for a few moments more then closed and locked the gate and went indoors.
Scarper Jack and the Bloodstained Room Page 5
