The Deadwood Stage

by Mike Hogan

  “Was the lady not tripping along, twirling her parasol?” Churchill asked.

  “Quite the contrary, young man. As I have described, she was moving in a sober fashion at my pace. I saw no parasol. I followed her - I mean that without any connotation of a connection between us, we merely followed a similar path - for at least thirty yards until we both veered towards the brightly lit windows of the Crystal Bazaar. It was coming on for dusk. In the shadow of the tall buildings that line Oxford Street and outside the pools of light from the streetlamps and the light spilling from the shop windows, it was dark already.”

  “Did the lady talk with anyone - any man - while she was in your view?” I asked. “Did any gentleman accost her?”

  “No, not one,” said Major Massingham.

  “And you saw the arrest?”

  “A burly police constable pushed past me in an intemperate fashion and came up behind the lady, Miss Caspar as I now know. He took her arm most violently. She attempted to defend herself. She then saw that her assailant was a police constable, and she remonstrated with him.”

  “Did you hear what they said?”

  “He said something like, ‘Got you, My Lovely ‘. She protested and demanded to know what offence she had committed. On hearing that the policeman alleged, ah, that infamous charge, she fainted; I, and the Audet person, assisted her. I offered the strongest representations to the officer that the lady had behaved in a respectable manner while she was under my observation. He replied that I ‘did not know the half of it’, so I took his number and followed them to the police station.”

  “And you are sure, Major, that the arrest took place in Oxford Street outside the Bazaar?”

  “Yes, on the pavement near Peter Robinson’s.”

  I caught a puzzled look from Churchill.

  “Well,” I said, struggling from the divan. “We will take up no more of your time, Major. You have been of inestimable help.”

  “Oh, are you going?” he said. “As you admired the painting, I had thought to show you and your young companion some of the artist’s photographs. Mr Tuke was kind enough to lend me several of his albums.”

  Churchill instantly doubled over in a coughing fit that was relieved by a half-cup of tepid tea. I made our excuses and we left. The pretty, brown-complexioned girl showed us to the door and, as she returned my hat and cane, I received a look that I can only describe as arch. I smiled a thank-you. I saw that Churchill noticed the exchange.

  I ignored his indecorous smirk as I tripped down the steps, adjusted my tiepin and set my bowler to a jaunty angle. It does a gentleman, especially one just out of the first bloom of youth, no harm to see that he can still strike a pretty girl’s fancy; even if, as in this case, she was a mere child.

  I looked at my watch as we climbed back into the hansom.

  “I say, driver,” I called. “We are almost at our time, and I know the traffic is building up, but I should like to drive back to Baker Street via Peter Robinson’s in the West End.”

  “The one in Oxford Street, sir, or the one in Regent Street?”

  “Ha!” I said. “You have saved us the journey and earned yourself a half-crown.”

  We returned directly to Baker Street where I quizzed the cabby on the exact location of the two shops in question. He pointed them out in a large-scale map of London in our sitting room and thumped downstairs whistling and jingling his tip.

  With Churchill’s help, Mrs Beeton’s guidance and using groceries obtained by Bessie during the morning, I was able to provide the household with a luncheon of curried beef and rice followed by stewed apples and a thick custard.

  After lunch, I took out the map of London again and puzzled over the discrepancies in the testimony of the two policemen and the two witnesses. I found it hard to concentrate as my thoughts were with poor Miss Caspar. I could see no good coming from her libel case against PC Endaby. It would be widely reported in the penny newspapers; her servants and neighbours would read the details. Even if she won the case, her reputation would be smudged, if not irretrievably tarnished.

  I determined to visit Miss Caspar to suggest that she drop the case, and perhaps return to the bosom of her family in Stockton until the fuss died down.

  A telegram from Holmes arrived. He said that he would be home before lunch on the following day. I instructed Billy to ask the telegraph boy to wait as I wrote a short telegram to Miss Caspar asking whether I might visit in the early evening. I looked forward to a pleasant afternoon preparing my notes on the arsenical curtains for publication, and then a drive across Town to Mrs Barker’s residence in Southampton Row for tea with Miss Caspar. I had saved one packet of Turkish delight as an offering.

  I heard a rumble of footsteps outside. The door was flung open and Wiggins, the leader of the Irregulars appeared. Churchill was behind him looking grave.

  “Go away, Wiggins,” I said. “I am busy. Churchill, give this to the telegraph boy.”

  “It’s Aaron,” said Churchill. “Bobby’s Negro friend.”

  “What of him?” I asked.

  “His head is cracked in,” said Wiggins. “He’s dead as mutton.”

  5. The Corpse in the River

  The Dipper’s Narrative

  “Sit, Wiggins and give us the circumstances of the boy’s death,” I said.

  “Be as precise as possible, Harry,” said Churchill opening a notebook. “You know our methods.”

  Wiggins took a seat at the table. Luncheon had not yet been cleared, and he devoured two bread rolls before he began his tale.

  “It’s like this. We was doing the Faint outside Charing Cross station. I’m on the ground, see, spitting and foaming, and the boys are working the crowd.”

  He shrugged.

  “A railway copper on the top of a bus spots the lay, and grabs Monty for dipping a wipe -”

  “Stealing a pocket handkerchief,” Churchill explained.

  “The copper takes him to the police station and sits him on a bench with the derbies on, I mean handcuffs, Doctor. While he’s sat there, he hears the desk coppers talking about a Negro lad they’d fished from the River the night before. His head was proper bashed in, they said. It was awful to behold. They said they’d found nothing in his pockets save for a small photograph of a white boy in a Yankee hat. There’s nothing else to show who this body was, despite he’d not been in the water more than a minute or two judging by the evidence.”

  “What evidence?” I asked.

  “Don’t know, Doctor. The coppers played a close hand on that. Anyway, Monty tells them that he might claim an acquaintance with this black fellah. They bring him down to the ice store at the coroner’s and show him the body. Monty says he did the Dead Faint for real when he saw Aaron’s brains all over the shop. He knew Bobby when they showed him the photograph. No doubt at all, sir.”

  I turned the matter over in my mind. Bobby and his friend Aaron had left Wiggins’s gang without a word and decamped to an unknown destination. A man in mutton-chop whiskers subsequently haunted the Waterloo Road offering a substantial reward for news of the two boys. A week later, Aaron was dead: foully murdered. Bobby was either dead too, or in grave danger.

  “We must find Bobby,” I concluded.

  I saw Churchill and Wiggins exchange satisfied looks.

  “How, Doctor?” asked Churchill.

  I grabbed a sheaf of telegram forms. I wrote out the two messages, willing myself to write slowly and clearly. I passed the forms and a half-sovereign to Wiggins.

  “Pop down and give these to the telegraph boy. Ask him to have them sent, and pay for answers.”

  Wiggins tried to read the addresses, slowly sounding out the letters one by one. Churchill read them over his shoulder.

  “Scotland Yard,” said Churchill. “And the coroner.”

  I nodd
ed. “The telegraph clerk will have to look up the address of the coroner’s office. Hurry, now.”

  Wiggins ran out.

  “Let me look again at that likeness of the missing boy.”

  Churchill slipped the picture from his notebook and unfolded it.

  “It is very fine. You say that the artist is a forger of banknotes. I thought to commission a portrait of Holmes for his Christmas present, but I suppose it would not do to employ a felon.”

  I handed him back the picture. “Tell to me more about your excursion to Lambeth.”

  Churchill described his evening’s entertainment with some humour. He and Billy first visited the Royal Victoria Hall, popularly known as the Old Vic’, a music hall, theatre, and coffee public house run by its lady owner on strict temperance lines. They then met Wiggins and his crew at the back of the Horse and Groom pub, run by its proprietor on strictly alcoholic lines, and ate a supper of boiled beef, potatoes, and carrots alfresco in the yard. Churchill took the testimony of four boys from various localities in the district that Mr Mutton-chop Whiskers had accosted. The man had offered a reward of ten pounds for information on a young American boy and a thieving footman. The missing boy was Robert W Taylor, and the servant Aaron Long. He had shown around a photograph of Bobby looking a year or so younger than he was when he met Wiggins and his crew. There was no doubt that the boy was Bobby, and the thief was his companion, Aaron.

  “How were the informers to receive the reward?” I asked.

  “They would take Mutton-chops to Bobby’s lodgings and get a tenner then and there,” said Churchill. He said that Wiggins was of the opinion that Mutton-chops couldn’t be very fly if he advertised that he carried ten pounds in his pocketbook.

  “Perhaps he was knocked on the head and robbed,” I suggested.

  “Wiggins says that he would have heard of it. He thinks that the cove gave up and tried elsewhere.”

  Churchill’s account impressed me. He acquitted himself well in circumstances well out of his normal way of life. He conversed easily and unpretentiously with boys far below his caste. I could find no reason for his father’s apprehensions concerning the boy’s intellectual capacity. I resolved to acquaint his mother with my conclusions and return him to his family. I realised, as I watched him draw a sketch of the Horse and Groom pub in his notebook, the tip of his tongue peeping out of his mouth as he drew, that I would miss him.

  Wiggins returned with the telegram receipts and change.

  “Now, gentlemen,” I said. “Let us examine the evidence. Mutton-chops is searching for a boy by name and description. He has a photograph of Bobby that shows him to be younger than he is now. That surely argues for some long acquaintance. Bobby wore respectable clothes that fitted well, and he spoke with an American accent. Mr Mutton-chops had a different accent.”

  “Like the pot man at the Horse and Groom,” said Churchill. “He’s from the Cape Colony in Southern Africa.”

  “He and Aaron,” I continued, “had a considerable amount of money and loot on them, probably stolen from the house of Mr Mutton-chops. Agreed?”

  The boys nodded their heads.

  “This again argues for a strong relationship between Mutton-chops and Bobby. Even though he has suffered a serious loss, it does not seem that the man went to the police, or they would have soon picked the boys up. What?”

  Wiggins was quietly chuckling.

  “I would say that Harry does not share your belief in the efficiency of the police, Doctor,” Churchill said with a smile. He turned to Wiggins. “Did they lock Monty for the dip?”

  “Gawd bless you, no. He slipped the derbies like a good ‘un. He hopped it as they opened the door of the police van back at the station.”

  Churchill turned to me and shrugged.

  “Well, there is no evidence that Mutton-chops went to the police,” I said. “Or that he advertised in the papers. I saw nothing. He made his own enquiries; not very effectively. He was something of a flat, was he not?”

  Wiggins looked at me with astonishment.

  “I read the Police Gazette,” I said not without some inner triumph. “I am not unconversant with the jargon of the criminal classes. Mutton-chops was unfamiliar with the street, easily gammoned or fooled, a flat fellow, not fly in his ways.”

  Wiggins nodded. “I will tell you, Doctor, that we did him for a fiver by describing Bobby exact and saying he was in a dead lurk.”

  He gave me an expectant look.

  “Empty building,” said Churchill after a long pause.

  “I see. You stung Mutton-chops for five pounds pretending that you knew Bobby’s whereabouts. That’s good. It supports my theory that he is not of the criminal fraternity. Yes, so now we have a chance.”

  I took a page of letter paper from the drawer of Holmes’s desk and wrote a paragraph.

  “I want this in the agony columns of the evening newspapers.”

  “Which ones, Doctor?” asked Churchill.

  “All of them.”

  Billy came in with a telegram on a tray. It was the answer to my previous enquiry.

  “Ha,” I said as I read the telegram. “The Middlesex Coroner has a sense of humour. I wired for directions to the Coroner’s Court and he writes, ‘Quickest way is to step in front of racing omnibus. Otherwise take cab to 9, St Laurence, Pountney Hill, EC’.”

  “Billy, get us a four-wheeler. Come, we will to the City. The game’s afoot!”

  “May I come, sir?” asked Billy.

  “No.”

  “Oh, go on, Doctor,” said Churchill. “He’ll be jolly useful, I bet.”

  “Oh, very well. If Mrs Hudson agrees.”

  The boys thundered down the stairs.

  The Phrenological Coroner

  We spilled from the cab at the Middlesex Coroner’s office.

  Inspector Lestrade waited at the kerb, furiously blowing his nose. He stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket and offered me his hand. I shook it reluctantly.

  “Fine day, Doctor. Where is Mr Holmes?”

  “He was called away on an urgent matter.”

  “I see.” He waved a telegram in my face. “This telegram asked me to meet him here.”

  “The telegram was from me, Inspector.”

  Lestrade sniffed. “Signed by you; yes, that is technically correct.”

  He turned to Billy and gave him a long, suspicious look.

  “I know you.”

  “Pageboy to Mr Holmes and the Doctor, sir.”

  Lestrade peered at Churchill.

  “I am Winston Churchill.” He held out his hand. “We met at Doctor Watson’s digs.”

  Lestrade ignored him and focused his narrow gaze on Wiggins.

  “I know you too.”

  “I’m his brother, Inspector.” Wiggins gestured vaguely at Churchill and Billy.

  “Shall we go in?” I said. “We may be able to shed some light on a ghastly murder that took place last night.”

  Lestrade nodded curtly and led the way up a short flight of stairs and into the Coroner’s offices. A clerk guided us to the back of the building and into a large room lined with bookshelves. A black, solid-looking desk stood between two sets of windows with a swivel chair behind it. On the desk were a carved mahogany penholder and a large, shiny ivory-coloured human head marked with coloured lines and strange symbols. The boys were examining this with interest when a short, bald man in a dark suit bustled in from behind us.

  “Welcome,” he said in a faint Welsh accent. “Deputy-Coroner Ivor Purchase at your service.” He shook hands with me, with Lestrade and with each of the boys, chuckling to himself and bidding us to make ourselves comfortable. He dropped into his seat behind the desk, put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, and regarded us benignly.

  “You must be D
octor Watson.”

  I bowed.

  “I can always tell a fellow practitioner, my dear Doctor, even when they arrive feet first.”

  He turned to Lestrade.

  “And you are Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, the scourge of the criminal classes.”

  The inspector beamed.

  “And the boys are, the boys.”

  He turned back to me with a bright smile.

  “The young gentlemen were looking at the head on my desk, Doctor. I wonder what they make of it.”

  “Is it to do with phrenology, sir?” asked Churchill.

  “Well done, young man, very well done. It is indeed. These marks and squiggles show the various sections of the brain and their special functions. Protuberances of the skull - lumps if you like - indicate features of the brain beneath, and therefore certain character traits. The region just above the eye is associated with concentration and introspection. You can see that this area is prominent on the inspector’s head.”

  We all turned to stare at Lestrade. He blinked back at us in astonishment.

  “And in my own case, these two areas are visible.”

  He pointed to the top of his own skull.

  “Self-esteem and love of approbation, ha-ha! All nonsense, of course.”

  He bent forward and peered at us over his steepled hands. ‘’You came to see me about the young Negro man washed up at Limehouse. Is that correct?”

  “It is, Doctor,” I said. “We believe that we can confirm his identity and furnish some clues to his likely murderer.”

  “Murder, Doctor Watson,” said Lestrade in his irritating nasal bray. “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?”

  The coroner opened a drawer in his desk and took out a slim folder. He slid it across to me with a smile. I opened it and found a two-page document. I read the heading on the first page and the summary on the last.

  “It is your report, Mr Purchase,” I said. “It details the autopsy and your findings. You have ruled that the boy was killed by a series of savage blows to the head with a blunt instrument, by a person or persons unknown.”