by M. J. Trow
‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘You paid me money just for that. It’s a quick answer. No. None of us girls met him. He used to go straight through to Kitty’s private party. Him and the woman.’
‘Woman?’ Grand and Batchelor looked at each other. This could prove fruitful.
The girl stood with her back still to them, the drops measured in a small glass. ‘Are you sure you don’t …’
Grand grunted.
‘Then, may I …?’
‘Be our guest.’ They watched as she knocked back the double dose and waited a moment for them to take effect.
‘Oh, that’s better.’ She plumped down in the chair. She lifted a hem and revealed an expanse of bare thigh. ‘You sure?’
‘Positive,’ they chorused.
Her hand went slack but the skirt stayed where it was. ‘No,’ she said, her eyelids drooping. ‘We never got to see Mr High-An’-Mighty Dickens. He’d come round the back, him and the woman …’ her head lolled.
‘Wake up!’ Batchelor said, leaning forward to slap her hand and accidentally getting thigh.
‘Sorry …’ she pulled at the hem again. ‘I thought you said …’ And this time, she was asleep beyond any waking, a smile on her face. She really did look like a child, with all the worry wiped from her face by the poppy’s caress.
Batchelor looked at her with wide eyes. ‘Matthew?’ he breathed. ‘Is she dead? That was a hefty dose she took.’
Grand went closer and felt her wrist, then lifted an eyelid. The pupil rolled up into her head and she tried to bat him away. ‘She’s alive,’ he said. ‘But we’ll get no more out of her.’ He lifted her effortlessly and carried her across to the bed, where he tucked her in. He dropped a featherlight kiss on her forehead. ‘She’s had an easy night of it tonight,’ he said, looking down at her.
‘This is probably a good enough place to ply her trade,’ Batchelor said. ‘It beats under the arches for the price of a bed, any day.’
Grand looked at him and smiled. ‘That is so like you, James. Always see the ointment, never the fly.’
Batchelor tried to work out whether that was a compliment or not, but couldn’t be sure. ‘Shall we go?’ he said. ‘Before Kitty comes back.’
‘I think that may be a good plan,’ Grand agreed. ‘A tactical withdrawal. And we did more or less get what we came for. Even if that wasn’t quite what Kitty was expecting.’
‘Did we?’ Batchelor whispered. He had opened the door and was peering out. The coast was clear, so they edged out and tiptoed across the hall.
‘Yes,’ Grand said as they eased the thick oak door closed behind them. ‘Dickens did go to Kitty’s and went to the parties for the more – shall we call them – committed opium eaters. And, he went with a woman.’
‘We still don’t know who.’ It was a fair point.
‘True. But the chances are that the lady in the case has a fair amount of laudanum about her person. Perfect for slipping into Dickens’s food or drink or even just feeding to him as a treat. We’re getting closer, James. Closer all the time.’
The old church clock of St George in the East was striking three as Grand and Batchelor left Canton Kitty’s. There was no moon to splash the gravestones with silver, only the pale slab of the river to their left where the lighters bobbed black. Both of them had heard the footfalls that were not their own and both of them had imperceptibly speeded up their walk. Matthew Grand’s strides usually had James Batchelor scrabbling to keep up, but tonight he matched him step for step. Bluegate Fields was not a place to be after dark and it was that hour in the metropolis when the dark was at its blackest before dawn. Soon the cabmen and the costers would be about, trudging to their carts for another long, sweating day. The labourers would be swarming to the dock gates of St Catherine’s and the Black Eagle to wait in hopeful line for news of a cargo ship that would bring them work. If not, and the ships only needed a handful each time, they would have to find their tommy where they could and crawl back to the arches in Pinchin Street to catch some sleep. Until the next time, when the only social round they knew would begin all over again.
‘How many?’ Batchelor whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
‘I count three,’ Grand whispered back. Of all the nights to leave his thumb-breaker at home. If push came to shove, fists were all they had. Fists, and the perfectly timed boot.
‘Is that the three behind us or the three in front?’ Batchelor’s question was louder now because there suddenly seemed no point in subterfuge. Blocking the path that ran between the graveyard and the river wall, three large roughs in fustian stood with folded arms.
Grand and Batchelor stopped. There was a shed to their right, a rickety, single-storey building that had seen better days. Batchelor read Grand’s mind. ‘No hiding place there,’ he murmured. ‘That’s the mortuary. If you’re hoping for help from anybody inside there, you’ll have a rather long wait. Who are they? Williamson’s boys?’
‘Now, we’re not looking for trouble, fellas,’ Grand called out to the men ahead.
Batchelor turned so that the two men stood back to back and he was facing the three who had been following them since Cable Street. ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘No trouble at all.’
‘Right,’ the man in the centre facing Grand said. ‘We’ll start with the wallets.’
‘Oh, you’re Irish,’ Batchelor beamed, changing places with Grand. ‘That’s refreshing in this part of London.’
‘We’ve got a joker, Sean,’ another man grunted. ‘A regular comedian.’
‘He’s an idol of the Halls,’ Grand said to the men in front of him. ‘Always tries out his new material on riff-raff from the bogs.’
The silence was tangible.
‘I said, the wallets,’ Sean repeated.
‘Oh, darn,’ Grand drawled, patting his jacket. ‘I’ve been and gone and left the dang thing at home.’
‘What a coincidence,’ Batchelor said. ‘So have I.’
‘It’s a double act, Sean,’ Sean’s man observed. He was sliding a club out of the wide sleeve of his coat.
‘So it is,’ Sean grunted. ‘I particularly like that one’s fake American accent.’
All six of the roughs were closing in now, and Grand wasn’t about to let them get any closer. He drove his boot into Sean’s groin and caught the man next to him with a left cross. Batchelor ran forward, driving his shoulder into somebody’s chest and sending them both sprawling. A club whizzed past Grand’s head and he grabbed the man swinging it and butted him, the Irishman screaming in pain as the blood spread over his face. Batchelor was back on his feet, trading punches with a man who stood a head taller. He felt a crack to his temple and his vision blurred as he staggered under a cudgel blow. Grand poleaxed another of them with both fists to the man’s chest, but he wasn’t ready for the club that caught him on the shoulder and he dropped to one knee.
‘No time to rest on your laurels now, Matthew,’ Batchelor hissed, and he lunged at the nearest man, bowling him over and grappling with him in the grass. Grand was on his feet again and he ducked below another flying club before bouncing its owner’s head against a gravestone. He tried to grab the club itself but he felt his arms pinioned and he was forced to the ground. Any second now, he knew, the boots and the clubs would rain down and it would be all over.
Batchelor heard it first, as a huge Irishman was strangling him with his own tie. A deafening, staccato rattle that was getting nearer. ‘Over here, boys,’ a voice called.
The rattle continued and a dark figure was suddenly amongst them, cracking heads and throwing men about.
‘Another time,’ Sean grunted in Grand’s ear before slapping him around the head and the roughs pulled back.
‘Come on, lads,’ the voice shouted. ‘They’re getting away!’ And the rattle died as the men vanished into the darkness. When Grand and Batchelor stood up, shaking and bloody, where they had expected to see a small army of policemen, they saw the rotund bulk of ex-Chief Inspector Field.
‘Lads?’ Batchelor said, looking around.
Field laughed. ‘Never fails,’ he said. He swung his wooden rattle once more with its deafening clatter that echoed through the graveyard. ‘I’m glad I kept this little souvenir of better days. You must be Mr Batchelor.’ He held out his hand. ‘Charlie Field.’
‘Impeccable timing, Mr Field,’ Grand said. ‘A few more minutes there and we might really have hurt them.’ He held something up in the light of the creeping dawn. ‘One of yours, James?’
Batchelor felt his jaw. ‘No,’ he said, running his tongue around his mouth. ‘Not mine.’
‘Nor mine,’ Grand said and he threw the bloody tooth away. ‘Something else for the charnel house, then.’
‘We’re grateful, Mr Field,’ Batchelor said, trying to straighten his tie. The knot was pulled so tight it was hard to move. ‘And what luck you happened to be passing.’
‘What’s luck got to do with it?’ Field chuckled. ‘I’ve been trailing you boys for the last twelve hours.’
‘You have?’ Batchelor frowned. ‘Why?’
Field looked at him. ‘I’m afraid you’re in over your heads, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the West End with doilies and tea parties. Look at a man funny here and he’ll rearrange your face. As you almost discovered. I thought you’d end up at Canton Kitty’s eventually.’
‘You knew about her?’ Grand asked, stooping as best he could to retrieve his hat.
‘Everybody knows about Canton Kitty. I remember when she used to starch the collars for her old man’s laundry. More innocent days, then, of course. I assume you went there in search of Dickens, as it were.’
‘You know about that, too?’ It was Batchelor’s turn to ask a question.
Field laughed. ‘I expect Dolly Williamson will have made some observations to you two about amateurs and professionals; and, pain me though it does, I’m afraid I have to echo him.’
There was a sound of running feet and a helmeted copper was hurtling towards them, swerving around the headstones, his boots clattering on the flags.
‘What’s the trouble here?’ he said, trying to catch his breath.
‘Whatever it was,’ Field told him, ‘it was all over five minutes ago. You’ll have to do better than that, boy.’
‘Oh, it’s you, Chief Inspector. Sorry, guv. I couldn’t place the rattle’s direction.’
Field closed to him. ‘What’s your name, lad?’ he asked.
‘Berryman, sir,’ the copper answered, standing straight with his thumbs down the seams of his trousers.
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen, sir.’
Field chuckled, then frowned. ‘You’re on point, aren’t you? Cable Street?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Then what the Hell are you doing here, lad?’ Field shouted. ‘Point is point and you never leave it even if all London’s burning. Is that clear?’
‘Yessir.’ Constable Berryman stood to attention even more, if that were possible. He hadn’t been born when Chief Inspector Field was doing his rounds, but somehow that made it all the worse.
‘Cut along back there, then,’ Field said quietly.
‘Yessir, thank you, sir. Er … you won’t be mentioning this to the sarge, will you?’
‘Who is it?’ Field asked.
‘Gallagher.’
‘God, no,’ Field grunted. ‘I’d rather gouge my eyes out. Run along, now.’
And Berryman saluted and was gone.
‘J Division!’ Field tutted and his eyes rolled skywards.
‘Do you know all the policemen in London?’ Grand asked.
‘Hardly know any of ’em these days,’ Field confessed. ‘But whippersnappers like young Berryman there need to think I do. I wouldn’t know Sergeant Gallagher if I fell over him.’ He looked at them both, sliding the rattle into his pocket. ‘No, the reason I know about Charles Dickens going to Canton Kitty’s is that I took him there.’
‘You did?’ Batchelor asked.
‘Of course. You can’t expect a man like Dickens to go alone to places like that. He insisted, though. He wanted local colour for the opening of Edwin Drood. Have you read it, either of you?’
‘Every word,’ Batchelor assured him.
‘Hmm,’ Grand said, with much less commitment.
‘I have to say, old friend that I was and one of his greatest admirers, I don’t think he quite captured an opium den, do you? And if the old crone he’s writing about is supposed to be Canton Kitty, he’s woefully wide of the mark there, I’d say.’
‘Did anything happen there?’ Batchelor asked. ‘Anything … untoward?’
Field laughed. ‘What, apart from the hallucinations, the visions of Hell and falling over a couple of dozen Jack Chinamen? No, it was just like tea with the vicar.’
‘Sorry,’ Batchelor muttered. ‘Silly question, really.’
Field drew a cigar from its leather case and offered the rest of the contents to Grand and Batchelor. They declined. Batchelor couldn’t feel his jaw and Grand was having difficulty raising his right arm. ‘I think old Charles regretted going to Bluegate Fields myself. Venomous place. A lascar held a knife to his throat; if I hadn’t intervened, he’d have been done for. So, all joking apart, how’s your investigation coming along, then?’
ELEVEN
Batchelor and Grand presented an unusual sight the next morning. There was marginally more flesh colour than bruise on each face, but it would take a good set of measuring callipers to decide by what margin. Batchelor’s lip was split and Grand’s left eye was half closed in what looked like an ironic wink. Every limb hurt to a greater or larger extent and they had both taken extra cushions to the table with them to address their breakfasts.
For once, Mrs Rackstraw had cooked them something suitable. The porridge she dished up as a rule was more lump than not, but she had managed things better and the oatmeal was as smooth as silk, slipping past sore mouths like mother’s milk. She had even cut the crusts off the toast and the coffee and tea was not anything like as scalding as normal. She spoke in lowered tones and it occurred to Grand and Batchelor that appealing to her maternal side was perhaps something they should do more often. Sitting still for too long was not really an option; each of them had an appendage that would seize up in cramps after just a few minutes, and so they decided that they would take a short stroll, to loosen up and perhaps quietly plan their next moves as they took the air.
Mrs Rackstraw helped them down the steps one at a time and stood, a mother hen to the last feather, in the doorway, looking after them with anxious eyes. They were good boys, taken all in all, if only they didn’t keep getting visits from such disreputable characters.
As they strolled down the Strand, Grand’s leg and Batchelor’s back started to loosen up, and within not too many yards from their front door they began to feel more human. The porridge coated their stomachs pleasantly, a slight northerly breeze had sprung up and so even the smell of the river was just a faint rumour instead of something that could stop a clock. Their strides lengthened and Batchelor even began to hum a snatch of a song. They couldn’t see any trailing Yard men either, which had to be a bonus.
Just as he got to the chorus, the peace of the morning was shattered by a heart-rending wail from immediately above their heads. Looking up, holding on to their hats, they could see nothing. The wail rose up the scale and then stopped suddenly. So suddenly that the silence was more foreboding than the wail, though that had been enough to turn their spines to water. Grand looked around him and saw a brass plate next to an imposing door. ‘Chapman and Hall,’ it said in ornate Gothic script. ‘Publishers.’
Grand nudged Batchelor and pointed. ‘Isn’t that …?’
‘Dickens’s publisher? Yes. It is.’
‘And did that wail …’
‘I would call it more of a screech.’
‘If you will.’ Grand was always happy to leave lexicographical detail to his partner. ‘Did it not come from that window, there?�
� He pointed again, to a frosted window that had some white letters painted on it: the H A L of ‘Hall’.
‘Shall we go and see what it’s all about?’ Batchelor asked, rhetorically.
‘I daresay Williamson will object,’ Grand said, ‘but I don’t see how we can let it be.’
And, rather gingerly, they climbed the stairs.
The scene that met their eyes when they pushed open the door at the top of the stairs was unusual but also explained the sounds they had heard. A wild-haired, wild-eyed woman was sitting sobbing on the floor, cradling one cheek in a wrinkled hand and leaning heavily against a door. Another door was open in the further wall and a flock of startled editors with inky fingers and eyeshades were looking out like guinea fowl, checking on where the fox might be hiding. Above the woman stood a man in his early twenties, dressed in the height of fashion and with hair just so; his immaculate clothing made the crouching woman look even more dishevelled by comparison. He was reaching down with one hand and speaking to her in soothing tones.
‘Come on, Em, now do. There’s no need to get in such a bait about it. We don’t know if Young Mr Frederic is in there, even, let alone that he’s dead. And, frankly, I don’t believe that the human nose is sensitive enough to smell blood, even close to, let alone through an inch of mahogany. So, be a good woman and stand up and calm down, in any order you choose. I’ve sent a boy round to Mr Frederic’s house and he’ll be here in a jiffy, I feel sure.’
This speech, which seemed reasonable to everyone listening, had no effect, unless possibly the woman began to sob even more heartbreakingly.
‘Em!’ The man had tried a quick slap. He had tried cajoling. Now it was time to try a little authority. She looked up, the tears making her rather piggy and red-rimmed eyes even piggier and redder. Above her receding chin, her lips trembled and quivered, her nose dripping tears.
‘Mr Frederic!’ she howled, and was once more incoherent with grief.
The man standing over her whirled away in frustration, and noticed Grand and Batchelor for the first time. After the first shock of their battered faces, his innate good breeding took control. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said, raising his voice a little to be heard above the wail. ‘We’re not actually interviewing new writers at present. Miss Jones isn’t very well.’
