Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments

by Francis Selwyn

  Sergeant Verity is possessed of no evidence from any of these witnesses to suggest that Lord Henry died other than an accidental tragic death.

  In accordance with instructions, Sergeant Verity has also examined the personal effects of the late Lord Henry. Consequent on this, he is obliged to mention certain items which may be distressful to His Lordships family but which his duty requires him to specify. There are three photographic plates of a grossly indecent nature, the figure of a naked man appearing in each, though the section of the plate depicting the head has been broken away. The man is identified by marks of wounds upon the body and rings worn as Lord Henry Jervis. Two of the young persons in the plates are known to Sergeant Verity as associates of the late Carlo Aldino, on whose premises the acts photographed appear to have taken place.

  Sergeant Verity is also in possession of a letter written to Lord Henry by a young person in an endeavour to extort money. A young person has been found who admits to writing such words at the dictation of Aldino but does not know the intent or purport of same.

  With great regret, Sergeant Verity is obliged to conclude that a blackmail conspiracy was attempted against Lord Henry. Sergeant Verity will not go so far as to suggest that His Lordship was induced by this to take his own life. However, he must advise that no pains be spared to keep this in confidence. Once the evidence of extortion is known, there will be no lack of ill-disposed persons ready to attribute self-destruction to Lord Henry.

  Verity read through his report and thought for several minutes. Then he dipped his quill in the little china well and added a final paragraph.

  Sergeant Verity can only say how extremely sorry he is that he has not been able to serve Mr Jervis more to Mr Jervis' wishes. He is also conscious of the grief which the late Lord Henry's death must cause and hopes he may offer sincere condolence.

  Sergeant Verity begs to remain Mr Jervis' obedient humble servant.

  Verity signed and dated the report. With a deep sigh of disappointment for himself and sympathy for the Jervis household, he took a cylindrical wooden ruler in his large fist, holding it like a truncheon, and drew the final neat line at the bottom of the page. Leaning forward over the little table again, his tongue protruding slightly through his teeth with the effort of intellectual concentration, he addressed an envelope to Richard Jervis, Esq., Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square. Since it was the very house in which he was writing, the report was unlikely to go astray.

  The room was unexpectedly bright and cheerful, overcrowded by ornaments and bric-a-brac which exemplified the wealth of the Jervis family. A Turkey carpet in red, blue and yellow adorned the floor. A gilded clock beneath a glass bell ticked the seconds away softly. The gold-framed looking-glass reflected a carefully landscaped and sunny rear garden through the open window. Richard Jervis looked up from his chair, his open hand smashed down on the inlaid table with a power which seemed beyond his emaciated frame.

  'You blackguard!' he gasped, throwing down the pages of Verity's report. 'You damned scoundrel!'

  'Sir?' said Verity, relaxing from his rigid posture of attention in dismay.

  "This!' shouted Jervis, threshing the air with the pages of the report. 'Is this what I have paid you to do?'

  'Sir?' The bewilderment grew on Verity's plump face.

  'Did I hire you that you might malign my brother's character? Have I paid you to traduce him and insult me in this manner?'

  'I never. . . .'

  'Indecent photographic plates! Letters from a whore! My brother was a man of more virtue than you could ever imagine, more worthy, more righteous. ..."

  Jervis beat his palm on the table in light, rapid strokes.

  'It ain't no pleasure to me, sir. . . .'

  'Be silent!'

  Captain Ransome, at his usual place behind Richard Jervis' chair, stood with eyes lowered, as though from shame on Verity's behalf. Jervis rapped the table and said nothing. Verity paused a moment as the young man's eyes flashed in excited fury at him and then looked down again. The portly sergeant, with an air of injured dignity, drew out his notecase and took from it a single sheet of paper. He placed it on the table before Richard Jervis, who picked it up, unfolded it and read it.

  'That,' said Verity sternly, 'was what come from Lord Henry's bureau. And I think, sir, if Captain Ransome ain't no objection to withdraw, you and me had best have a private word.'

  'I think, Captain Ransome, you may find matters to occupy you,' said Jervis shortly. Ransome nodded, half bowed to his master, and withdrew.

  'First off," said Verity as soon as the door had closed,

  'there's things not said in that report. Such as who the gentleman may have been that Captain Ransome was representing when he went to see Charley Wag. Could a-bin Lord Henry, sir. Could a-bin you.'

  Richard Jervis said nothing for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was unsteady.

  'How much have they paid you?’

  'Paid, sir? Don't follow, with respect, sir.'

  'How much have my brother's enemies, his murderers, paid you? How much did they give you to fabricate this tale of blackmail?'

  'There's no murderers, sir, only in your imagination. I ain't got to tell you, sir, how bitterly sorry I am things should come to this. But facts is facts, Mr Jervis, and evidence is evidence, like it or not.'

  'Evidence!' said Jervis with a sneer. There was another long silence.

  'Sir,' said Verity carefully, 'I also got to say that there's reason to think the blackmail mayn't be over. They must a-got hooks into this family and whoever inherits Charley Wag's place may bleed you for Lord Henry's reputation.'

  'You fool!' said Jervis with contempt.

  'Sir,' Verity persisted, 'I gotta say this. If I was working on this case official, for Mr Croaker, first thing I'd ask now is about Captain Ransome. He ain't always had a good reputation, sir, though he went as Honest Jack, 'im and Charley Wag quarrelled, and fought. What I gotta ask is, could it a-bin thieves falling out?'

  Jervis looked up, the triangle of fair beard seeming sharper, the grey eyes bright with fury.

  'How dare youl' he shouted in a voice that half rose to a scream, 'how dare you impugn Jack Ransome! That man has been my legs, my eyes and ears. That man has brought me to life again!'

  'Very sorry, sir,' Verity mumbled, and he began to feel that he really had behaved badly towards Ransome and Richard Jervis, that he deserved at least some of the wrath.

  It was at this point that Ransome returned. He handed several slips of paper to Richard Jervis and Verity recognized them as the tracings of Elaine's blackmail note which he had made so that Samson might identify the writing. There was also a copy in his own hand of the entire note.

  'Found in the fellow's room, sir,' said Ransome. 'His practice attempts for the final draft.'

  "ere!' said Verity in a purple fury, 'by what right is my belongings searched?'

  'Unfortunate for you, Sergeant Verity,' said Jervis bitterly.

  'Sir,' said Verity, hanging on to the truth like a terrier to the neck of a rat, 'I got proof that I never fabricated such a note. The girl Elaine admitted writing it, yesterday.' And he told the full story of the day's events.

  Richard Jervis sniffed derisively.

  'So,' he said, 'you seize your Elaine, a fifteen-year-old slut. You take her to a private place where she first refuses to have any part in your plan. Then your female accomplice strips her. She thrashes Elaine's backside for half an hour. And then, of course, the girl agrees to say that she wrote the letter. Might that not be it, sergeant?'

  Verity was about to invoke Samson as a witness. Then he thought that if things went badly it would be better to save Samson rather than that they should both be destroyed. He said,

  'Them photographic plates, sir. There's proof of blackmail in them.'

  Lord Henry's double drawing-room was on the floor above them. In slow and painful procession they moved to the stairs, Richard Jervis shuffling with the aid of two sticks and Captain Ransome's pow
erful arms. At the staircase, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, Ransome picked up his master, like a groom carrying a bride, and bore him rapidly up the three sides of the staircase which rose above the central vestibule. At the double door of the drawing-room, Ransome took a key and opened the lock.

  'Show us your evidence,’ said Richard Jervis. He was breathless and his wan face was pinched with pain.

  Verity led the way into the front drawing-room and through the archway to the rear.

  'The plates is in the secret compartment of the ornamental bureau, sir, what stands before the rear window at the centre,' he said triumphantly. Then he stopped. Before the rear window in question there was a small occasional table without a single drawer. Verity swung round to "see where the bureau had been moved to but there was no sign of it in the rear room. He charged like a wounded bull into the front drawing-room. It was not there either.

  'Well?' snapped Richard Jervis.

  'It's gone, sir. The bureau's gone. Someone must a-took it!'

  'Sergeant Verity,' said Jervis, 'if you are indeed a blackmailer, thank God you are also a stupid one.' Captain Ransome intervened.

  'Sir, might not a murderer have left such evidence here for Mr Verity to find, hoping to suggest suicide by Lord Henry? Then, thinking that Mr Verity would never mention such disagreeable evidence to you, might not the murderer think himself safe to remove it after a few days during which nothing had happened?'

  'It ain't likely, by God,' said Jervis furiously, 'not without my key!'

  'Not just your key, sir,' said Ransome respectfully. 'There's Mrs Butcher's and Lord William's.'

  Richard Jervis thought about this, and Verity looked sidelong at the bluff red face of Jack Ransome, a broken-down half-pay captain who had done him an unexpected friendly service by his suggestion.

  'It could a-happened, sir,' said Verity encouragingly. 'That or something like it.'

  Richard Jervis looked helplessly about the room. Then his gaze swung at Verity.

  'Sergeant,' he said sharply, 'I advise you to forget what might have happened and remember instead what will happen. I have hired you and I will not release you so easily. If, in the shortest possible time, you do not provide the service for which I have paid, Inspector Croaker and your superiors shall hear the whole sorry story of your failure. More than that, I shall preserve the so-called blackmail letter and your own scribblings. They too shall go to Mr Croaker, with my compliments and my observations. Do not think, sergeant, that you will get the better of me by perjured evidence forced from a Lambeth street-girl by beatings and threats!'

  'I been put up, sir!' said Verity, his voice quivering with anger.

  'If you have sold yourself to my enemies, you shall find you have made a bargain to repent of!’

  'Sold!' muttered Verity, jowls trembling, 'I been put up, sir, and the villain that done it ain't half got a reckoning to pay!'

  7

  'Fifteen four and a flush of five,’ said Mrs Rouncewell triumphantly.

  'I'm low and Ped's high,' added Samson, turning over the dummy hand.

  Mrs Rouncewell's healthy masculine features creased in a deep grin.

  'Tip and me's game,' she announced. Then she collected the cards which lay on the table and coaxed them into a pack. The single illumination in her dark parlour was the oil lamp at the table's centre, casting a rich shadowy light on the faces of Samson and Verity who sat at play with her. Mrs Rouncewell splashed a careful measure of spirit from a stone jug into the three glasses, adding hot water from a kettle. Finally she plopped a lump of sugar into each.

  'Nasty ungrateful wretch,' she said suddenly, recalling an earlier topic of discussion. 'Nasty charity-school creetur. Ran off the first chance she got, not minding the pains I'd took to apprentice her proper. There ain't no reason a girl can't make a respectable living at the wash-house, once she puts her mind to it. It ain't one of your dirty, unhealthy jobs. Clean 'olesome suds and water. Fresh linen. And I never had to give Miss Elaine her licks more 'n two or three times.'

  'No appreciation,' said Samson sympathetically. 'But her mother was a whore and if the girl ever has a daughter she'll likely go the same way.'

  'I could a-took a fancy to that little madam,' said Mrs Rouncewell wistfully.

  Verity took a pull at the unaccustomed heat of the gin shrub and his eyes watered with the effect.

  'You never saw who 'elped her out?' he asked breathlessly.

  Mrs Rouncewell shook her head.

  'Never saw,' she said carefully, 'but I know sure enough. Jack Tiptoe and the scaldrum dodge needed 'er. There was two of 'em as they calls Stunning Joe, the fighter, and American Jack, walking the pavement outside 'ere as if they'd been paid to walk a beat.'

  'She ain't with 'em,' said Samson, 'not that we can see.'

  'No,' said Mrs Rouncewell, 'she wouldn't be where you could see, a-cos she knows the consequence. Straight back 'ere for the bloody 'iding of a lifetime. Nasty little slut.'

  'She might a-gone back to the fairgrounds,' Verity remarked. 'She might be anywhere from York to Bodmin. Contrariwise, she might have got a taste for what Charley Wag put her up to. Them blackmail dodges is easy money for a girl like 'er that doesn't care a fourpenny-bit in the china dog-kennel for what she puts on paper. It don't 'ave to be true. There's a thousand young gentlemen in London, and old 'uns too, that'd pay her a hundred pound rather than have it whispered that they'd dishonoured themselves, even if they never had,'

  They finished their gin.

  'I'm to walk back,' said Verity to Samson. 'I left the 'ouse in Portman Square before the chains were put on the doors, and I shall go in after they're taken off in the morning. I must start on my way, Mrs Rouncewell, I really must. But I shan't easy forget all the 'elp you gave me and Mr Samson.’

  'I'm sure it was nothing, Mr Verity,' said the muscular old woman, 'I only fret for 'aving lost Elaine. Why, she was fed on the best. None o' your padding-ken gruel and slops but lovely rabbit pie. Sich a rabbit-pie! Sich delicate creatures with sich tender limbs that the very bones melt in your mouth and there's no occasion to pick 'em. And for that the little slut run off! Nasty baggage!'

  With varying expressions of sympathy for the ingratitude shown by the fifteen-year-old street-girl towards her mistress, Verity and Samson took their leave. Even in the deadest hours of night, the streets just south of the river seemed bright and noisy with buying and selling. At the kerb of the paving stood a block-tin stove baking potatoes for sale to passers-by, a lavish design in coloured lamps erected over it. The kidney-pie stand was advertised by a candle in an oil-paper lantern with characters crudely drawn. One of the ragged boys gathered under the canvas blind of the cheesemonger's shop, earned a penny a night by running to fetch a light from the wine vaults each time the candle blew out. Under the flaring gaslights, the watermen from the Blackfriars Wharf returned with dim and dirty lanterns in their hands and trudged to the ill-lit doors of 'watering-houses' for pipes and rum shrubs.

  'You ain't struck a lot of luck, Mr Verity,' said Samson kindly. 'I shouldn't wonder if you wasn't glad to get back to the division. Specially since you was hired under false pretences.'

  'Gammon,' said Verity, striding in time with Samson. 'All gammon.'

  Samson chuckled.

  'Far from uncovering evidence of blackmail, my old son, you helped to suppress it.' "ow d'yer mean?'

  'Lay you odds,' said Samson, 'your Mr Jervis wasn't worried whether Lord 'enry died accidental or not. But he knew there was evidence of blackmail and he wanted it found. So he hires you for an investigation, knowing a detective officer is the most likely to find it. Then, when it's found, he destroys it and calls you a liar for saying it ever existed.'

  Verity shook his head.

  'Not if you'd seen Mr Richard Jervis,' he said softly.

  'Lay you odds?' Samson suggested hopefully. ‘I ain't a gamester, Mr Samson. Never was and never will be.'

  There was another silence which continued as the
two sergeants crossed London Bridge. In the recesses above the piers of the bridge, in arches, and doorless hovels, the destitute huddled in shapeless masses. The mist hanging over the river surface deepened the red glow of fires on small craft moored off the wharves, rendering more dark and indistinct the murky buildings on either bank. Warehouses, stained by smoke, rose heavy and dull from the mass of roofs and gables, among which the tower of St Saviour's and the spire of St Magnus struck three o'clock on the night air. A forest of masts rose from the shipping below, as though in reflection of the thickly scattered spires of churches above.

  'Mr Samson,' said Verity softly, 'if you wanted the body of a dead man, 'ow would you go about the business?'

  'I s'pose I'd go to an anatomist like men that walk the public hospitals do.'

  'No,' said Verity impatiently, 'what would you do if you wanted the body of one man in particular?'

  Samson's face creased in suspicion and alarm.

  'Opening tombs?' he said. 'Snatching corpses?'

  'No, Mr Samson. Legal.'

  'Whose body might you want to examine, then?'

  'Lord Henry Jervis,' said Verity with a scowl.

  Samson threw back his head with a guffaw that roused the sleepers in the niches of the bridge and set them shifting uneasily.

  'Cor,' he said at length, 'you ain't 'alf a caution, my son.'

  'Nevermind that, Mr Samson, 'ow might it be done?'

  'Well,' said Samson jovially, 'seeing that the corpse you wish to question is a peer o' the realm, you might first ask his guv'nor. Not Mr Jervis in this case but Lord William. If 'e ain't averse to his brother being uncoffined, then he might ask the Home Office to please grant an exhumation order. Or you might ask Mr Croaker to ask them. Only thing is,' said Samson smugly, 'Home Offices are apt to be fussy about having their clients dug up all over the place and seeing Kensal Green turned into a 'oliday fair."

  'I never even seen Lord William,' said Verity thoughtfully. 'I got no idea how he'd take to it.'