'It ain't the work of the world to catch young Elaine,' said Samson thoughtfully, 'but there's no harm in liming your bird good and proper.'
He and Verity got out of the cab. Samson helped Stringfellow down from the box and changed coats with him, so that it was now Samson who appeared, at first glance, as a shabby coachman and Stringfellow who seemed, in the dark interior of the cab, a man who might have ten or twenty sovereigns in his pocket. Stringfellow remained in the cab, holding a silver-topped stick which Samson had procured for the occasion to give a final touch of affluence to the old man's appearance. Samson swung himself on to the box of the cab, tilted his hat forward a little over his face, and appeared to doze in the warm sun. Verity leaned in through the cab door.
'Mr Stringfellow,' he said softly, 'I want you to have this.' He handed Stringfellow a wooden device consisting of a six-inch stem and a small slatted piece which protruded from the upper half of the stem like a flag on a pole.
'What's this, old chum?' asked the cabman doubtfully.
'It's my constabulary rattle, Mr Stringfellow. If there's any cause for trouble, or if the young person should make off, you're to spring the rattle. Press the top and then swing it round for all it's worth. Makes a racket to wake the dead.'
With this promise, Verity withdrew, lurking among the chairs in green and puce-coloured leather displayed before a furniture shop at some little distance from the cab. The bright, hot summer afternoon passed in dusty silence. A ginger-beer fountain pulled by a pair of ponies rumbled slowly down the street. It resembled nothing so much as an upright mahogany piano with two brass pump-handles and glass containers for receiving the drink. Beyond the motionless perspective of Stringfellow's cab and the beer fountain, a small group of men was gathering on a corner. They were stripped to the waist and bore on their bare flesh marks of burns and scalding so horrifying that any passer-by was likely to throw a shilling into the tin mug and hurry on, so that he might avoid being accosted by the injured men. Verity knew the trick of old, 'the scaldrum dodge' practised by beggars who learnt the art of staining their bodies with acid and gunpowder before setting out on their rounds. Under other circumstances he might have intervened, but there was more important business on hand.
'Kind and benevolent Christians!' the voice of the beggars' leader drifted faintly on the warm afternoon air of the street, 'It is with feelings of deep regret and shame that we unfortunate sailors are compelled to appear before you this day, to ask charity from the hands of strangers.'
Sailors, thought Verity, recognizing one of the beggars as Jack Tiptoe who had made a considerable living as a disabled beggar who could not put his heel to the ground. When discovered walking with both heels comfortably on the pavement he had been despatched to six months on the treadmill at Coldbath Fields Gaol. Jack Tiptoe had never been to sea in his life, nor was he likely to unless it was on a convict hulk.
'We are brought here from want, I may say actual starvation. What will not hunger and the cries of little children compel men to do?'
Several small children, possibly associated with the beggars, had approached the ginger-beer fountain.
'When we left our solitary humble homes this morning, our children were crying for food. I assure you, kind friends, we and our families would have been houseless wanderers all last night but, as you may see, we sold the shirts off our backs to pay for lodgings. We are English sailors, British jack-tars. It is hard that you won't give your own countrymen a penny, when you give so much to foreign hurdy-gurdies and organ-grinders.'
A girl of five or six, walking slowly away from the scene of the begging, holding a little tin cup, passed Stringfellow's cab. She stopped and turned a tearful face at the open door and then entered, holding out the cup. Verity began to move slowly and unobtrusively forward.
'I hope and trust,' chanted the beggars' spokesman, 'some humane Christian will stretch out a hand with a small trifle for us. . . .'
At that moment, Verity saw the prey. She was by no means seductive enough for Charley Wag's private collection, though she had served her time in Ned Roper's bawdy-house. At fifteen years old she appeared a loud, defiant youngster as she tossed the fair hair spread loose across her shoulders. Her face was a study in vulgar, snub-nosed insolence, her dark narrow eyes seeming to have the tint of green bronze. She moved rapidly along the street, a rough, striding tomboy, her grey skirt worn as short as possible to display a length of leg. At the cab she stopped, faced the interior and swore at Stringfellow for a dirty, filthy thing. Verity crept closer and Samson, as 'cabman', still appeared to doze on his box. Her voice was loud enough for Verity to catch every word as she swore at Stringfellow, demanding what he meant by trying to rape the little girl of five or six. Then there were hints at the financial cost to 'such a gentleman as he was' of having to face the police, a court case and public shame.
So that was the caper, Verity thought. Perhaps it was an extension of the scaldrum dodge. Elaine working in partnership with the beggars. No doubt it was more remunerative than the fairground display for which she had worn the page's costume.
She was calling now to the beggars, urging them to come and see what had happened. By God, Verity thought, there must be a score of silk-hatted gentlemen, moved to pity by a little girl's tears, who had fallen victim to the dodge and had turned out every pocket and parted with watch, chain, pocket-book and stock-pin to silence the hue and cry of the begging school.
The beggars had fallen silent and were now beginning to move with slow determination down the pavement towards the cab. Verity braced himself for a scuffle. But just then, the hot quiet afternoon erupted with a din of the most raucous and clattering kind. Seeing the advance of the beggars, Stringfellow had sprung Verity's rattle. It was a sound which any member of the criminal class knew all too well. The beggars heard it, paused, turned and ran, scattering in every direction, separating down different alleys and turnings to lessen the chance of capture. Jack Tiptoe led the retreat, sprinting away down the New Cut like a champion.
The little girl ducked away from Verity and ran off. It was not worth giving chase, he thought, and losing the more important catch. With Samson at his side and Stringfellow now out of the cab, he pinned the girl against the coachwork and locked the iron cuffs on her wrists.
'Why, Miss Elaine,' said Samson cheerily, 'fancy you having come to this sort o' caper!'
'You bastards!' she said, in the tone of a belligerent heifer, 'you put this up on purpose!'
They bundled her into the cab, where she landed sprawling on the leather seat, the grey pleated skirt hauled up far enough to display the sturdy roundness of her young thighs.
'Now,' said Samson conversationally, 'bastards we may or may not be, miss, but we ain't here to arrest you. We want you where you can be got and seen from now on.'
The girl's narrow eyes brightened, as though at the thought of what she might make as a police informer.
'First,' said Samson, 'there's got to be a reckoning for the dodge you been working in the New Cut here. You'll be took to Mrs Rouncewell's. ..."
'No!' cried Elaine.
'You'll be took to Mrs Rouncewell's, dealt with by her, and put to honest toil in her hygienic steam-laundry. When she's brought you to the right frame o' mind, Mr Verity will ask you some very important questions. . . .'
'Bugger your questions!' she snarled, struggling between them.
'Arrest might be better, Mr Samson,' said Verity nervously. 'Arrest is proper.'
'You want your questions answered,' said Samson, 'you leave my case to me. She ain't going to say a word unless she's obliged.'
He tapped the roof of the cab.
'Mr Stringfellow, 'ave the goodness to take us round to Mrs Rouncewell's Steam Laundry, off Old Kent Road.'
Lightning stumbled forward with a rattle of harness, under Stringfellow's gruff command, and they jogged sedately towards Blackfriars, the Elephant and Castle, and the strange domain of Mrs Martha Rouncewell.
The Hygieni
c Steam Laundry was a forbidding building behind a facade of soot-blackened London brick, windows with frosted glass and iron bars, its single vaulted entrance which suggested the gate of a workhouse. Mrs Rouncewell was a widow with a living to earn and she was no believer in allowing her working-girls off the premises. Ten years before, she had been a redoubtable police matron who took a lively interest in her duties of close-searching female suspects. After a brief marriage, which proved too much for her spouse, Horace Rouncewell, she undertook the running of his business with vigour and determination. The laundry was a greater success in his widow's hands than it had ever been in his own, and she remained the friend, often the assistant, of any detective officer who took her fancy. To this class, both Samson and Verity belonged.
Even on such a hot afternoon, a fog of escaping steam half-filled the cobbled courtyard as the gate was locked again behind Stringfellow's cab. Beyond the opaque glass of some of the windows, flesh-pink shapes moved to and fro. It was no secret that in such establishments, in the moist heat, the girls' clothes became sodden rags within ten minutes.
Many of them worked stripped naked to the waist and some chose to work naked altogether.
In her parlour, to which the hiss and clatter of the laundry penetrated clearly, Mrs Rouncewell, dark and brawny with two tufts of hair springing from moles on her chin and cheek-bone, surveyed her visitors.
'We 'oped,' said Samson piously, 'that you might favour us with your assistance in a delicate investigation. This young person, Miss Elaine, is to be asked questions of great consequence to a titled and noble family. Only she won't answer. However, she has also been apprehended begging and extorting. Now, for that she might be confined in gaol. But such wouldn't serve the noble family and wouldn't answer questions. On the other hand, if she was brought to repentance by a lady of a firm hand, such as yourself, and taught to answer when spoke to, then her misdemeanour might be forgot. And o' course, Elaine here would be expected to apprentice herself here to you, for which the parish might reimburse you, and for which you wouldn't pay a 'aypenny wages to her.'
Mrs Rouncewell thought about this.
'Quite the best thing for 'er,' she said at last. 'It beats the Old Bailey by lengths. Miss Workhouse! Sister Charity! In 'ere.'
Two burly young women in grimy smocks appeared. 'Her,' said Mrs Rouncewell, nodding at Elaine, 'for the barrel.'
Without another word said the two smocked women seized the handcuffed girl and in a few deft movements stripped off the skirt and the pants she was wearing underneath. One of them pulled aside a curtain, revealing an alcove into which a barrel lying on its side had been securely wedged. Verity, nervously sensing what was about to happen, looked at Samson. But Samson watched with complete calm. The women lifted Elaine and pushed her face down over the barrel. As it was happening, the sturdy adolescent tossed back her fair hair and twisted her face round defiantly. Then her head and shoulders disappeared over the far side of the barrel and Verity could see nothing beyond the full pale cheeks of Elaine's bottom. Mrs Rouncewell armed herself with a switch cut from an ash plant.
'And now,' she said, 'p'raps you gentlemen'd 'ave the goodness just to take a turn down so far as the Elephant.'
As they left the parlour, she turned to her task, measuring the ash-plant carefully across the plump globes which Elaine reluctantly presented.
'A fine mess,' said Verity furiously as they crossed the yard, 'a fine mess there could be out of all this.'
'A fine mess there could be for you, my son, if that little whore Elaine won't answer your questions,' said Samson confidently.
There was a sharp smack followed by a shrill cry. "owever,' said Samson, 'Mrs Rouncewell ain't one to let you down.'
They walked the length of the New Kent Road to the Elephant and Castle, and then turned back. As they entered the cobbled yard once more, the sounds of the confrontation between Mrs Rouncewell and her new apprentice-girl were still continuing. Samson led the way into the parlour. Elaine twisted and lunged convulsively like a fish in a net. Mrs Rouncewell looked up.
'How the minutes fly,' she said in surprise. 'I usually sends gentlemen to walk a stretch. It helps to give me a grip hold o' time.'
Elaine, red-eyed and weeping copiously, struggled upright. Mrs Rouncewell patted her familiarly on the rear, causing the girl to jerk forward.
'Cry away, Elaine my dear,' said Mrs Rouncewell. 'It exercises the lungs, washes the face, and clears the eyes of dust. And it softens the temper. Why, you'll be as meek and obliging for the next half-hour as ever Mr Samson could ask!'
With that Mrs Rouncewell drew her smocked assistants to her and left the girl with the two sergeants. Elaine wore neither her skirt nor pants, both of which garments Mrs Rouncewell had taken as a precaution against her fifteen-year-old apprentice absconding.
'Well, now, Miss Elaine,' said Samson jovially, 'p'raps you'd just care to answer questions as they're asked.'
Elaine snivelled and said nothing, her hands rubbing busily behind her. Samson walked slowly round her, thoughtfully admiring the bare thighs, the triangle of light hair between them, and the nakedness of the girl's body from her waist down to her stockings. Verity produced a pencil and a notebook.
'Now, miss,' he said self-consciously, 'where might you have been when a picture was took of you in tournament costume, breeches and a doublet?'
'Never 'ad a picture done,' she said sullenly.
'Where might it have been done and you not know?'
'Greenwich Fair,' she said, 'Brighton races, Lewes, Lansdown Fair, Newport. There's a thousand places we went.'
'And where might you have written a letter to Lord Henry Jervis, that is now dead?'
'I never did,' she said, nervously pulling at her lower lip with her teeth. 'I never 'eard of him.'
'Miss Elaine,' said Verity softly, 'the letter is found, your hand is identified, your picture with it for good measure. Now, that barrel is still there and it's no inconvenience to put you backside-upwards over it and call in Mrs Rouncewell. So I just ask you again, where might you have writ that letter, signed Anonyma?'
'It was done when I came to town, two months since,' she said grudgingly. 'I was to have had money and never a penny I got.'
'Why did you write it?'
'I was made to. Charley Wag, 'im that was coopered afterwards. He made me do it.' 'Why Lord Henry Jervis?'
'I knew a bit about him, and Charley thought he'd know me.'
'Miss Elaine,' said Verity, 'Lord Henry Jervis died violently. There's suspicion he was cruelly murdered. Now, let's have the truth of that letter.'
But even as he spoke he realized the mistake. At the reference to murder she looked up, frightened silly at the thought of the noose and the slow throttling death on the public gallows as the trap let her down with a slither rather than a drop.
'I'll tell you!' she screamed. 'I swear it's all! Charley made me write! He told me every word to put! I could never have wrote a letter without it! I pray I may be blasted if I know a word more than that!'
Samson stood close by her, stroking the back of Elaine's thigh gently.
'You don't care about being blasted or suffering the pains of hell, Elaine. You care more about Mrs Rouncewell being fetched in here. That's what you need.'
'Fetch her!' said the girl with sudden firmness. "There's no more I can tell, a-cos there isn't more to tell. A tanning ain't going to alter that.'
Verity gave a quick glance at Samson and shook his head slightly.
'Then there ain't more for you to do, miss,' he said gently, 'than serve out your time here. You may escape if you try, but I ain't got to tell you how Mrs Rouncewell welcomes back them that's taken again.'
He opened a door and called the proprietress in.
Ten minutes later, Verity and Samson walked away across the cobbled yard, leaving the new washer-girl to her apprenticeship. Samson, evidently giving expression to feelings which had greatly preoccupied him, said,
'You was unfortunate, Mr Ve
rity, you was most unfortunate to 'ave mentioned any suggestion of Lord 'enry being murdered to Miss Elaine. You saw how it shut her up. You scared her so she wouldn't say another word.'
Verity flushed slightly.
'Mr Samson,' he said firmly, 'I ain't so stoopid as not to know what I'm about. Course I scared 'er. If I'd done otherwise, she'd have said nothing in the first place. You'd make a better detective officer, Mr Samson, if you wasn't so quick to judge by the first appearance of a thing!'
Arms swinging a little, the two sergeants marched side by side out of the gates of Mrs Rouncewell's Hygienic Steam Laundry in a silence born of mutual reproach.
Sergeant William Clarence Verity presents his compliments to Mr Richard Jervis and has the honour to submit the results of the investigation which he was hired to undertake.
Sergeant Verity has examined Mr Rumer, the keeper, and others who witnessed the death of Lord Henry Jervis at Bole Warren, who avouch for His Lordship stumbling and firing his rifle in what appeared an accidental manner. There was, at the time, no other person within thirty yards of Lord Henry.
Mr Somerville, gunmaker of the Strand, has sworn to Sergeant Verity that the bullet which killed Lord Henry must have been fired by the rifle His Lordship was carrying. This can be told by each rifled barrel making its unique mark on a bullet as fired.
Dr Jamieson of Burlington Street has confirmed to Sergeant Verity that the medical facts are consistent only with Lord Henry having shot himself on stumbling.
Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Page 11
