Death in the Devil's Den

by Cora Harrison

  Me, Alfie, friends with a toff, he thought with wonderment. And such a toff, too! He was still amazed whenever he thought of that scene where Richard jumped the gap without hesitating. There was no doubt that Richard was full of courage – a bit foolhardy, even. Strange that he was so anxious about Sammy taking his place. There must be something about this Mr Ffoulkes that made him nervous, decided Alfie. He was glad that his new friend had not shown these signs of nervousness in front of Tom. Tom would have been bound to sneer at him.

  ‘You can walk into the choir stalls with Sammy, Richard, and then you can be sure that he is in the right place,’ ordered Sarah. ‘Keep your head; don’t take any risks. No point in showing off.’ She sounded severe, and a little worried, so Alfie hastened to reassure her.

  ‘Richard says that it’s so dark that the choirboys have to feel their way,’ he said and then he turned to Richard. ‘What about me? Where do I go? Where do I wait for you?’ He could hardly wait to get into the rooms of Boris the Russian organist and spy. What was in that brown-paper wrapped parcel? Even as he listened to Richard’s instructions, he was wondering about that parcel.

  And then there was that strange sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Alfie repeated it over to himself again and again, frightened of forgetting it. It must be of huge importance for a man to eat the paper that it was written on.

  The Dark Cloister was very damp and smelled of old, dead things. It had stone pillars set at intervals all the way along it and the ceiling was so low that it was only just above Alfie’s head. It was very dark, also, and once Alfie had gone a few yards from the entrance he had to grope his way like a blind man, moving from pillar to pillar. After that he stayed still and waited. It seemed a very long time until the pounding of feet on the stone slabs told Alfie that Richard was coming.

  ‘Don’t know how you run in the pitch dark like that,’ he grunted as Richard came to a stop beside him.

  ‘We always do that, Smith Minor and myself. You just get into the middle of the Dark Cloister and then start to run. Some fellows’ nerve fails them – the ghosts of the old monks from eight hundred years ago are supposed to haunt the Dark Cloister,’ said Richard. Then he added airily, ‘I say, do you believe in ghosts? You can hear them chanting the old Latin chants sometimes. I’ve heard them myself, in this very place. It’s the oldest building in the place and there’s a cellar beneath it where no one dares to go.’

  Boys’ stuff, thought Alfie, not bothering to answer. He had no interest in ghosts and no idea what happened eight hundred years ago. Survival was what was important and in order to survive in London these days you needed three things: food, shelter and fire – in that order. These schoolboys had never had to trouble themselves about having to get these essentials for life, so they frightened themselves with ghosts.

  ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he said. ‘Get that key to the organist’s door.’

  As soon as I see what’s in that parcel, I’ll go straight to Inspector Denham and tell him the whole story, Alfie decided. It was obvious how information was passed to the Russian Embassy and why Inspector Denham or the men from Scotland Yard had not been able to lay their hands on the guilty Member of Parliament, whether it was Ron Shufflebottom from Yorkshire, Tom Craddock from Cornwall, or Roland Valentine from Essex. Whichever of these was the spy, they were using Boris Ivanov, the Russian organist at Westminster to make contact with the Russian Embassy.

  ‘All the spare keys hang in a little room outside the headmaster’s study. He won’t have locked it before going across to the Abbey. The servants need the keys to bring in the fresh coal and make up the fires for the evening.’

  Richard sounded very carefree and led the way into the school, walking confidently along the dimly lit passageways. Alfie followed cautiously, stepping from one pool of shadows into another and keeping well back when Richard cautiously turned the handle to a door.

  Even Alfie was taken aback when it was suddenly thrown open and a furious voice said, ‘Boy, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Sorry, sir! Sorry to disturb you, sir! Mr Ffoulkes wanted to know if you were coming to the service, sir.’ Alfie had to admire Richard’s ready imagination. But would it work? He held his breath.

  ‘I’ve told him already that I have a headache.’ The headmaster sounded more irritated than annoyed. Alfie drew in a breath of relief, but too soon.

  ‘Who’s that boy there? Someone’s over there. I heard someone. Who is it?’

  Quickly Alfie grabbed a top hat from a shelf in the dark passageway and placed it on his head. The headmaster held up his candle and peered through the gloom. Out of the corner of his eye, Alfie saw a shadow of a boy in a top hat on the wall behind him. There was nothing he could do about his bare legs and his torn clothes, but in the dim light he might pass for a Westminster scholar.

  ‘That’s Wilkins, sir. He’s not well; Mr Ffoulkes told me to take him back to the dormitory, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Now leave me in peace!’ The headmaster slammed the outer door shut and Alfie heard a key turn in the lock.

  ‘That’s torn it,’ whispered Richard returning to Alfie. ‘He usually never bothers locking that outside door. Now what will we do? Should we get out on the roof and then climb in through his window? It’s probably locked, of course. We’ll have to smash the glass.’

  He sounded quite unconcerned about smashing the glass in the organist’s room and once again Alfie thought how reckless his new friend was. Perhaps if he, Alfie, had always had money and people calling him sir, he would have been as reckless as Richard. As it was, he could see problems in smashing windows. There must be another way.

  Alfie thought for a moment and then smiled to himself. It was worth a try.

  ‘Let’s go up to your study,’ he murmured in Richard’s ear, but said no more until they were safely inside the little room with the door closed behind them. Only then did he open the cupboard and remove the board and show Richard how he had climbed up the wall to the attic.

  ‘I know what it was,’ said Richard, holding the candle up high and peering up into the dim, cobwebby space between the wooden panelling and the stone wall. ‘Westminster School was the old monks’ place in the past, and it was so cold and damp that they built a wooden wall inside the stone to make little rooms. Some master told me that. I say, do you bet all the rooms are like this? I’d say they probably are. Do you think that we can get into any of the rooms in the same way?’

  ‘It’s easy to climb up,’ said Alfie. ‘But can we get down into the organist’s room? That’s the question?’

  ‘Should do,’ said Richard confidently. ‘It’s on the other side of the building; but it’s on the top floor so it should be easy to get down to it, if the other side is the same as this.’

  They climbed the stone wall, Alfie leading the way, finding footholds on the wooden beams. Despite Richard’s confidence, they went into quite a few wrong rooms until they eventually arrived at Boris the organist’s room. By this time the two boys were covered with cobwebs and streaked with dust and dirt. Richard gave a worried look at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Just twenty minutes to go,’ he grunted as he lit a candle from the embers of the fire. ‘I say, if we find something perhaps we should try blackmailing him. We’ll just get a pat on the back if we hand him over to the police.’

  ‘I’ve been promised five pounds,’ said Alfie. He wondered whether he should share it with Richard and was relieved when the Westminster boy laughed.

  ‘Five pounds?’ he said. ‘That’s just a fleabite! My father would give me five pounds just to get me out of his sight. We’d get more than that from Boris.’

  Alfie did not answer. For him, five pounds was a fortune, but he didn’t want to admit this. Quickly he looked around the room. The table was covered with grubby piles of notebooks and many loose sheets of paper. There was a tray with inkpots filled with black, green and red ink and a pile of neatly trimmed feather pens.

  But
there was no small, brown-paper wrapped parcel.

  Where would the owner of the room put something important, wondered Alfie. He searched the cupboard, but only clothes and a musty old gown hung there. A quick hunt through the top shelf only turned up a mortarboard and a few tattered books of music.

  Richard crawled under the bed, but came out with empty hands.

  Then Alfie had an inspiration. He went to the bookcase and pulled out the books in clusters of five or six at a time. There was nothing on the top shelf, but then, on the second shelf, he struck lucky. There was something behind a set of dictionaries.

  ‘Come on,’ groaned Richard. ‘We’ve got to get back to the Abbey. If Sammy is discovered I’ll be flayed alive.’

  ‘Here it is,’ said Alfie. He pulled out the wrapped parcel. It had been opened and then re-wrapped; he could see that. The red wax seal had been broken. Quickly he took the box to the table, undid the knot on the string and spread out the paper, waiting eagerly to see what was inside it.

  It was a box of sweets!

  Alfie pulled up the lid and smelled them. ‘Real sweets,’ he said, baffled.

  ‘Let’s have one each,’ said Richard with a grin, though he still looked nervous. He recited some of the names of sweets that he recognised aloud: chocolate, truffle, Turkish Delight, fudge.

  ‘Better not,’ said Alfie. ‘Might be poisoned.’ He spoke absent-mindedly, because a slip of paper had fallen from the lid of the box of sweets. Picking it up, he saw it had a series of numbers on it.

  ‘Write these numbers quick,’ he said to Richard and, with one more worried look at the clock, Richard copied the figures onto a scrap of paper, using black ink and shaking some sand over the paper when he had finished. Alfie shoved the paper into his pocket, giving a hasty glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. Only fifteen minutes to go!

  ‘We’d better not take them – too risky,’ he said, making sure that the slip was placed back in the same position inside the lid and then folding the brown paper over the sweet box. He was just about to tie the twine when he saw Richard’s eyes widen with horror.

  There had been a click from the lock.

  And a sound of the door handle turning.

  And the heavy velvet curtain hanging in front of the door moved in the draught.

  ‘The headmaster!’ whispered Richard.

  Alfie froze. There was no time to escape.

  And then suddenly . . .

  ‘Headmaster!’ called a voice from the corridor outside.

  CHAPTER 13

  RISKS

  ‘Who’s in there?’ said an irritable voice. And then, ‘Yes, yes, Mr Irwin. I’ll attend to that in a moment. I just want to find a book that I lent to Mr Ivanov.’

  ‘It is the headmaster!’ Richard looked around wildly. White-faced, he blew out the candle. ‘Let’s get up to the attic,’ he whispered.

  ‘No, we’ll be trapped there. Let’s get out of here.’ Instantly Alfie acted. Might as well take these things now – the headmaster will tell Boris that someone was in his room, he said to himself. He shoved the box of sweets into his pocket and went over to the window, feeling his way in the darkness. He fumbled for the handle and pushed it open. A damp draught of foggy air streamed into their faces. Alfie climbed out onto the slates.

  ‘You go first,’ he said. ‘Get straight up onto the roof. I’ll count up to six to give you a start. I’ll let him have a sight of me so that he doesn’t suspect you.’

  Then they had some bad luck. Just below them in Dean’s Yard was a gas lamp and, as Richard climbed onto the windowsill, it was lit with a pop. The lamplighter moved on back out through the gate without looking upwards, but now the two would be visible. However, there was little that the headmaster could do to a ragged boy climbing out of the window, reckoned Alfie. He would make a great fuss. He would shout, yell and send for the police; but by that time he and Richard would be on the roof of the Abbey and could climb down on the far side.

  The roar of Stop, thief! came almost immediately. Alfie glanced back and saw a red-faced man wearing a mortarboard leaning out of the widely-opened window. Luckily he was looking down, not up. Alfie did not wait any longer. Richard was probably on the Abbey roof by now. Quickly he dragged himself up, holding onto the stone ledge at the end of the roof.

  In a moment he was on the roof ridge. There was no response to the headmaster’s cries and Alfie guessed that most of the servants took their rest during the service at the Abbey. In any case, the organ was now playing very loudly and the booming notes filled the little yard with noise.

  Alfie stayed where he was for the moment. A few seconds later, he saw the silhouette of a black hat against the night sky. Richard was over at the north side of the Abbey. There was a small door there. If Richard could get down quickly, he would still be in time to swap places with Sammy in the choir stalls.

  Then the sound of singing came to him. Someone must have opened the west door. Soon the people would be coming out.

  ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,’ sang the high, sweet voices of the choir, and Alfie almost thought that he could distinguish Sammy’s voice from amongst them. He listened intently. There was no sign of Richard now, so hopefully he would have got down before this hymn had finished.

  Then the organ began to play again and the voices of all the churchgoers, deep and high, mingled in the words.

  Alfie had often heard Sammy sing this and he mouthed the words to himself as he jumped the gap and landed on the roof of Westminster Abbey.

  ‘Glory to thee, my God, this night,’ sang the congregation as Alfie edged his way across the roof of the south cloister.

  ‘For all the blessings of the light,’ he hummed tunelessly as he made his way past the devil’s head.

  ‘Keep me, O keep me, King of Kings,

  Beneath thy own almighty wings.’

  Now the sung words were getting fainter as he reached the centre of the Abbey roof.

  Everything seemed easier this time and soon he was over on the north side of the Abbey, listening to the organ thunder out the last few notes and then suddenly fall silent.

  Did that mean that the service was finished, wondered Alfie. And if so, had Richard had time to change places with Sammy before the choir had to file their way out of the church, and back down the Dark Cloister? Each boy would be holding a lighted candle, so it was important that the swap was made before the procession took place.

  Alfie stood up beside a statue and peered down. The people were beginning to stream out of the Abbey. Some were talking and others were just looking for cabs. There was no air of excitement about them, though. No sign of anything unusual happening.

  And then he saw a pair of figures that he recognised. One was a girl in a thick, respectable-looking black cloak and the other was a blond boy wearing a suit and carrying a top hat. The two were linked together, the girl’s arm tucked into the boy’s arm. Alfie smiled as he looked. Sarah would walk with Sammy as far as Trafalgar Square and then she would hand him over to Tom and Jack while she went off to her evening’s work at the White Horse Inn. They would have to get Smith Minor’s suit and top hat back to Richard but in the meantime, thought Alfie proudly, Sammy looked a treat in it.

  As for me, thought Alfie, I’m better off staying where I am for the moment. There seemed to be a lot of policemen around the Abbey tonight and he would stay for an hour or two on the roof to give everything time to calm down.

  CHAPTER 14

  TROUBLE

  ‘Richard was great, wasn’t he?’ Alfie burst in through the door of the cellar, giving Mutsy a quick pat on the head. They were all there. Sammy, though still looking unusually clean and tidy, had changed out of the smart clothes and was wearing his own ragged breeches and torn coat. He turned his head eagerly when Alfie came in, but turned back to the fire again when he heard his brother’s words.

  ‘Richard, Richard, Richard,’ sneered Tom. ‘What’s so great about Richard? Just a toffy-nosed, flash- talking swell. Who cares
about him? We’re sick of him, aren’t we, Jack?’

  Jack said nothing, just looked troubled.

  ‘I suppose you don’t need me tonight, then,’ said Tom. ‘Is your precious Richard going to hang around street corners getting freezing cold? I can just see him! You know what he’s going to do, don’t you, just as soon as he gets tired of you? He’ll play the informer, and then you’ll find yourself in hot water. If ever I saw a snitch, well, he’s one.’

  ‘You shut your mouth and get out of here,’ said Alfie hotly.

  ‘C’mon, Tom, I need a hand,’ said Jack, the peacemaker. He steered Tom quickly past Alfie and they could be heard arguing on the cellar steps.

  ‘He’s just jealous,’ said Sarah, as the voices disappeared. ‘He likes working with you.’

  Alfie said nothing. He frowned at the fire while Sarah told him all about how well Sammy had done and how a lady beside her in the Abbey had whispered to her that she had never heard the choir sing so beautifully as they sang that night.

  Then Alfie recounted how he and Richard had stolen the box of sweets from the organist’s room. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do now?’ he continued when neither Sarah nor Sammy responded. ‘I’ve just decided, I’m going to wrap up a parcel that looks just like that and tie it to a key in just the same way as they did before and I’m going to put it into the postbox and see what happens.’ He looked at Sarah. ‘What do you think? Will it work?’

  ‘What do you hope will happen?’ asked Sarah, narrowing her eyes.

  Alfie clicked his tongue in an annoyed fashion. If he had said that to Richard there would have been an immediate response of ‘What a lark!’

  ‘One of them men, one of them MPs, will pull it out, of course, and then I’ll know the truth,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘And what will happen if none of them goes near to the postbox, if none of them touches it?’