by Parry, Owen
“We just wanted to ’ave a minute with the eel-man what found the parson, Inspector Marjorie. A matter of a few questions, and no ’arm done.”
Inspector Marjorie smiled. “Well, ’ave as many minutes as you want with ’im. ’E’s just round back, in the piss lane. But I ain’t sure you’ll find ’im quick with ’is answers this morning.”
TWAS A DAMNABLE BUSINESS. The man had stepped out on a private matter, in broad daylight, just where the boats crowd in and young Jews hawk silk scarves to the oystermen for their sweethearts or vend used shoes and guernseys. Down a close between two coffee houses he went, not half a dozen paces, where the danger was to your shoes and senses, but hardly to your neck. And, in a blink, he lay with his throat pinched in and his eyes wide open in wonder.
“It’s beginning to seem like a dangerous profession, the eel trade,” Inspector Marjorie said.
Inspector Wilkie was speechless.
“Dead as a week-old flounder, God rest ’is soul,” the porter bellowed on. He seemed to like the prospect of an audience.
“Quiet, you,” Inspector Marjorie told him, and the man slunk off.
“Might I take a closer look, sir?” I asked Marjorie.
“Peek up ’is arse, for all I care,” the inspector said. He really was in a poor humor. “Cooper, Lumley,” he called to the men in uniform by the victim. “Let this fellow ’ave a look and a good one.”
I had a good look. And what I saw was like a club, beating upon my fingers, as I struggled to cling to the present. I touched the narrow welt upon his neck, although it was unnecessary. And I marked the differences where the blood had gathered, here a vein bruised blue, there an artery darkening brown. Twas needless, my fingering and staring, for I was already dreadful with my knowledge.
I rose and walked back to the feuding inspectors. I must have had the face of a man gone bankrupt. For if my pockets were sound, my spirit had failed me.
I am a steady man, that is my gift. But now I wavered.
“What I don’t understand,” Inspector Marjorie was saying in a tone almost of blame, “is ’ow the business come off right ’ere in the daylight. Nobody sees a thing, to ’ear them tell it. Yet, the sorts ’ereabouts sees more than they should the rest of the time. Always on the look-out, they are, and some of them with good reason.” He folded his arms over his chest. A tall man he was. “But I suppose you’ve got a ‘scientific’ explanation for the matter, Inspector Wilkie?”
Wilkie gave a sort of growl and looked off through the masts that spiked the river.
“Aren’t you going to tell us ’ow he was done for?” Marjorie needled.
“With a Thuggee cord,” I said.
They both looked round.
“The welt,” I continued. “I’ll recognize it until my dying day. A Thuggee cord was the instrument. Who did the choking, I cannot say.”
“Thuggee, now,” Marjorie said, with the old policeman’s suspicion in his eyes. “And ain’t that to do with India? Thugs and dacoits and bandits and such? And what’s India got to do with Billingsgate, if I may ask?”
I shook my head. “I cannot say,” I admitted.
“Major Jones is something of an expert on India,” Wilkie put in. “Out there during the Mutiny, ’e was.”
“I thought ’e was an American? Though ’e sounds cod Welsh to me.”
“Well,” Inspector Wilkie said, as if I were not present, “it seems ’e was a bit of this and that aforetimes.”
Marjorie eyed me skeptically. “And ’e says I’ve got black ’Indoos running around strangling people, does ’e?”
“I did not say any such thing, Inspector,” I told him. “I only said a Thuggee cord was used. Perhaps by someone who learned the trick in India. Though queer it is. For the Thugs are more than bandits, see. It is all a ritual and a devilish worship to them, a sacrifice to their idols. It would be odd for a white man to learn the knack of it. And survive.”
“And so we’re back to niggers running loose?”
I began to speak, but found I had nothing to say. Which is burdensome to a Welshman. For words are our cakes and ale. The truth is I was rattled. And confused.
For flashes of an instant, I was not even certain where I stood. Had I closed my eyes, the boats and the boys in their canvas jackets and all the dockside tumult would have fled, and I would have smelled sandalwood and attar. Or the dreadful sweetness of the pyres along the ghats. The ripe perfume of a woman, tawny and loving, God forgive me, and the stink of a house struck by cholera. The smell of powder and blood. And the boundless reek of Man. When you have been young in India, see, you may leave it later on. But it will not leave you.
“I believe we’ll be going along,” Inspector Wilkie said to his counterpart. “It seems the major ain’t used to the smell of fish.”
BUT WE DID NOT GO FAR. Wilkie guided me along the quay, past a scrawny artist who was sketching boats and whistling, to an establishment mere yards away. Rodway’s Coffee House consisted of a large and crowded room, surprisingly clean and orderly, where an honest man could breakfast for a penny, and fill his belly properly for two. We sat down among the slurps and smacks and the clatter of tin and china. Now, my mind was mightily upset, and my spirits unruly, but my stomach was in perfect working order and, due to the day’s irregular beginning, I had not had my breakfast. So I ordered the two-penny “tightener,” although I am reserved in most expenditures.
Inspector Wilkie settled for the penny’s-worth of buttered bread and coffee. Now, I will tell you: Once you have become accustomed to the coffee of America, the tepid, brown water they serve in Britain will not do. Twas as thin as English beef was tough. But I drank mine down, as not to waste. So let that bide.
We were finishing our victuals and chewing the day’s events in a random manner, for there is a certain tiredness that comes upon the troubled heart when it pauses. And Providence descended. Fascinated, I was, by the serving gentleman behind the counter. He sliced and buttered bread with a smooth and ceaseless rapidity worthy of a modern industrial machine, and I wondered if we might not find ourselves remade as living engines in this day of infernal boilers and reckless speed. The age of steam is a frightful time for Man. Twas then the queer fellow sidled up and sat down without a greeting. An instant later, he leapt back up and asked, with extravagant politeness, if he might sit down. Then he plopped into the chair again without waiting for our answer.
Thin to a hurting, he put me in mind of the recruits out of the English slums who signed to serve in India, all spindly limbs and chests slight as Popery wafers. I could not determine his years for the filth of him, but he stank of decades of fish. His eyes flipped back and forth about the room, in imitation of the death-throes of a mackerel.
Leaning in across the table, he swamped myself and the inspector with the oceanic tide of his breath. His teeth were green and coated.
“I wun’t talk to that Marjorie for the world,” he said, “for ’e got no respect for an honest, working man.” Closer still he come, displaying the myriad anthracite pores and emerald pustules on his face, and punishing our nostrils. “I noted as to ’ow you gents took an interest in poor Billy. ‘Poor Billy Bounds,’ says I to meself, ‘strangled and dead all over.’ And just last night, ’im standing tops of reeb to all the boys in the Lion and Lamb. ‘Poor Billy,’ says I, ‘but that’s what comes of chasing after flash girls and lording it over your mates, when everybody knows you’ve been doing dab for months and must of come by them show-fulls of money dishonest like.’ Oh, I knew when I seen that tall gent this morning that Billy was up to ’is ears in it. I says to meself when I seen ’im, ‘There’s trouble a-day.’ But I never thought they’d choke ’im dead in Piss Row.”
“What tall gent?” Inspector Wilkie asked.
Another wave of Neptune’s breath broke over us. “Why, the one that come in this morning and didn’t buy nothing, but only ’ad at Billy for all to see.”
“What did he say? What did he look like?” the inspector dem
anded.
“Oh, I only said as we all could see, not that we could ’ear. But going ’ard at it, they was, all nasty and hissing. As for ’ow the gent looked, ’e was tall and big through every living part of ’im.” The fellow rubbed his cuff across his nose. “Looked like ’e could porter a double basket, ’e did, and keep an arm free to shove you. But then they all run big and bad, your Scotchmen.”
“A Scotsman?” I asked quickly. For I had not forgotten the dead agent in Glasgow.
The little fellow twisted and turned. “Well, I couldn’t say yes or no, not all and for certain, but ’e looked like a Scotchman, all red in the face and the ’air. And for all the size of them, there’s a pinch to the way they does things.”
“Did he go outside with the victim?” Inspector Wilkie asked. “With Billy Bounds?”
“Oh, no such thing, guv’nor, no such thing. There’s the queer of it. No, off he goes, the Scotchman, like a peeler after a pickpocket, out of the market and headed to the other end of Thames Street.”
Wilkie and I looked at each other.
“Oh, I told ’im, I did,” said our informer. “I says to ’im right there, right on the spot, last night, I says, ‘Billy, she ain’t for the likes of us, and even if she was, Dutch courage won’t ’elp you, no more than buying rounds you can’t well pay for.’ And ‘Can’t pay?’ says ’e, bold as brass and all flaring upon me, and ’e pulls out a mountain of banknotes and says to me, ’e says, ‘There’s more where that come from,’ says ’e, ‘for me fortune’s turned, just like I told Mrs. ’Epburn.’ ”
“Who,” Inspector Wilkie put in, “did you mean when you said ‘she ain’t for the likes of us?’ This Mrs. ’Epburn, would that be?”
The fellow shook his head as if we were great fools. And perhaps we were.
“Mrs. ’Epburn and Polly? That’s a good one,” he said, with a laugh so foul I feared it would coat us and follow us with stink throughout the day. “I was referring to Miss Polly Perkins, what sings in a penny gaff along in Eastcheap. Polly Perkins, the White Lily of Kent. Billy was deathly sweet on ’er, but the likes of ’er won’t have nothing to do with an eel-man. The likes of ’er won’t even stoop to a shrimpmonger or an oysterman with ’is own boat, not a flash bit like ’er. ’Er and Mrs. ’Epburn, that’s rich. No, Polly paid Billy no mind, though she sings like a bird.”
“Then who,” I tried to clarify the matter, “is this Mrs. Hepburn?”
“Oh, she’s the pawn-mother Billy was fond of trading with. For ’e didn’t like to go pawning where familiar folk could see ’im. The sin of pride was all over ’im, and I pities ’im where ’e is now. Took whatever turned up to Mrs. ’Epburn, ’e did. She got ’erself a back-of-the-close shop over in the Dials, where I wouldn’t go meself if you paid me a sovereign.”
“The watch,” I said, grasping my cane.
FOUR
THE POLICE RIG RETRACED ITS EARLIER COURSE, BUT our progress seemed wickedly slow. London is an ancient city, see, and not fit for the size and speed of modern conveyances. The weather promised to grow hotter than a city likes or the Englishman finds customary. Twas the sort of day when even the thrifty housewife sacrifices a ha’penny for the baker to cook the family dinner in his oven, sparing her family the heat of her kitchen stove. Of late, I had cooked in Mississippi, where even springtime boils, and I had stewed a decade in the clay pot of India before that, so my beef was toughened. But Inspector Wilkie had the look of a pig turning on a spit, although I do not mean that disrespectfully.
“We’ll be blessed if the cholera don’t come over us,” he said. Then he thought for a moment and added, “Seven Dials is the Devil’s own place in a cholera year. The worst sweepings of London turn up in the lanes and closes. Irishmen, too. Pig dirty, every one of them. No, the Dials ain’t pleasant in the best of years. Provides all the social nourishment to grow up a criminal class. It’s a scientific wonder, it is.”
“And is this place in the City Mile, as well?” I asked. “Or does your authority extend there, Inspector Wilkie?”
“Even the City wouldn’t ’ave their likes. No, the Seven Dials runs off St. Giles and, sorry to say, it’s Bow Street’s own green pasture.” We jarred to a stop where a wagon loaded with tall crates blocked the way. “It’s always like this,” the inspector continued, “with the loads from the India docks coming in. And every what-’ave-you going back out in trade. One of these days, all London will come to a stop.”
A boy called the latest news across the tangle of blocked carriages and carts, offering The Times for sale at thruppence. “Latest report from the Calcutta stock market, all just in,” he cried. “Cotton prices up in India, Manchester all in a great anxiety, read it ’ere first, gentlemens.”
Now, a good newspaper is an investment in our education, and its price cannot be counted as squandered. I waved him over and the lad dashed between wheels and horses and piles of waste dropped in his way. The edition was much thicker than our American papers, a dozen sides or more. I folded it up and put it in my pocket, for it is impolite to read in front of companions.
Wilkie watched the boy run off again and shook his head. “Now, who would cut the ’and from a living child, I arsk you that, Major Jones? Whether a fellow’s been to India or not, I don’t see ’ow as ’e could bring ’imself to do it.” He seemed genuinely at a loss, although a policeman sees more of life than most. “I ’ave a boy and girl of me own, you know. My Albert’s onto ten, and Alice seven. I wonder ’ow I’d feel if someone—”
“Tell me,” I said, wishing to ease his thoughts and turn us back to business, “what do you think the chances are of one of your men bringing in news of the boy?”
Troubled enough I was myself, for I could not but feel I was to blame. Had Abel Jones not come to London town, that luckless boy might still have had his hand. And his life. But I have told you of that already, and must not repeat myself, for a tale wants proper telling. Yet, the thought of that child returned to haunt me constantly.
Wilkie shook his head again, and the eyes in his hairy face approached despair. “If there’s not a thousand unwanted children in London, there’s ten thousand. And if there’s not ten thousand, there’s twenty. Live like rats, they do. One won’t be missed.” Below the quills of his eyebrows, something glistened. “You wouldn’t believe the ’alf of what I sees, Major. And the little fellows what earns a penny or two from their misery are the lucky ones. A body loses faith in ’is fellow man, ’e does.”
“There is a higher faith that does not fail us, Inspector Wilkie.”
He monkeyed up his mouth and disappointed me. “I’m not one for the church, Major Jones, for I can’t see ’ow it ’elps. I only tries to live a scientific life, and to raise the young ones proper since their mother left us.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook off his despondence and sat up. We passed St. Paul’s again, in shifted light.
“You know,” I began, for I had been thinking, “there is something that occurs to me. A thing I do not like.”
He turned my way, with curiosity lifting his mighty eyebrows. Beyond his form, a rat-catcher preened down the walk in his velveteen jacket, tame rat on his shoulder, ferrets in their cage, and a battle-scarred terrier heeling.
“Do you recall,” I continued, “how, yesterday, as we examined the late parson, I asked you if you might give me the name of the eel-seller?”
He nodded. “I does, indeed.”
“And who was down there with us? Besides the parson, I mean. Who knew that I was likely to ask the eel-seller questions before too much time had passed?”
He understood me then. I let him think on the matter for a moment. His thoughts troubled him and his face showed it.
“Well,” he said, as we passed a band of children delighted by a collapsed donkey, “there was you and me, but we don’t figure. And your Mr. Adams and son.”
“Above suspicion,” I said. “And you trust Mr. Archibald, of course?”
“Mr. Archibald �
��as devoted ’is life to science.”
“What about the constable who assisted you?”
“Farmer? Sound as the Bank of England. Dependable as rain on a Brighton picnic.”
“And that leaves?”
He did not answer me, for he was figuring the lie of things, although he knew the name as well as I did.
“It leaves young Mr. Pomeroy,” I said. “Of the Foreign Office.”
“Mr. Pomeroy,” he began, carefully, “is a gentleman. You only ’ave to listen to ’im talk. And it’s famous ’ow ’is guv’nor’s got a pile. I don’t see ’ow Mr. Pomeroy could figure.”
“All the same, there is logic in it. He’s known to have Confederate sympathies and—” I stopped, wondering if I had said too much. For some of my purpose must remain concealed.
Poor Wilkie could not go the final step in the corridor of supposition. He was an Englishman, see, and such cannot think past the power of a birthright. Oh, sad it is. Inspector Wilkie might look down and spot a plenty of criminals, but when he raised his eyes he saw his masters.
I let it go. For the present. I had been thinking with my tongue, and that is never wise. So I changed our theme entirely as we clattered westward and the principal streets improved.
“Would you happen to have heard of a great revolutionary fellow, a German sort, one Mr. Karl Marx?”
“Can’t say as I ’ave. But what’s revolutionaries got to do with this?”
“Nothing,” I assured him. “It’s only that my Washington landlady has a certain attachment to him and thinks him the greatest fellow in the world. He lives in London and suffers great deprivation, I am told.”
“Well, he ain’t alone, revolutionary or not. What’s ’is name again?”
“Karl Marx. I believe he writes a great deal and wants to overthrow the established order.”
“Well, we’ll put ’im right, if ’e tries any nonsense around ’ere.”
“Might you inquire, on my behalf, and see if his address is recorded? My landlady makes him sound an interesting sort, although my friend, Dr. Mick Tyrone, thinks the fellow’s a fool.”
