Death at Hungerford Stairs

by J C Briggs

  ‘Zeb? With a Z?’

  ‘Story there, Mr Dickens – if you wants to ’ear it.’

  Dickens was delighted. What could equal the story of Septimus Grave?

  ‘I do, and for the telling you ought to have another glass.’

  ‘I’ll not say no. Dusty work this morning.’

  A grey-faced waiter in a greasy apron splashed with mutton gravy brought the ale. Occy drank deeply.

  ‘Zeb,’ he began.

  ‘Let me guess – Zebedee – it has to be.’

  Occy grinned. ‘Worse than that.’

  Dickens gave thought to his, admittedly, limited repertoire of names beginning with ‘Z’. And there would have to be a ‘B’ to make sense of Zeb. Something from the Old Testament – wasn’t there someone called Zobah or was that a place? Zeeb? No, he’d made that up, surely. He looked at Occy who was still grinning.

  ‘No, I give up. Put me out of my misery.’

  Occy took another swig of his ale. ‘Zerubbabel.’

  Dickens laughed out loud. ‘No, no, I’ll not believe it. No mother could …’

  ‘She did! Mrs Scruggs was a mortal religious woman. Took to it like a man takes to drink. Which was the trouble – Mr Scruggs drank and Mrs took to the good book. Read ’an read for ’er child was coming an’ she thought to save ’im from the wickedness of the world. An’ a passage took ’er fancy from a prophet or some such body – Haggai – wot told this prince Zerubbabel that ’e ’ad to obey the Lord an’ be strong. It seems ’e did an’ was chosen by the Lord for something. I don’t recall wot, but Mrs Scruggs wanted ’er lad to be obedient and strong so that must be ’is name. Mr Scruggs tried to stop ’er but chapel preacher was all for it. Zerubbabel it must be.’

  Dickens tried, and failed, to imagine a babe in arms saddled with such a name. He shook his head.

  ‘Tis true, Mr Dickens, though, o’ course, no one could be bothered with all that babbling, not even Mrs Scruggs, so Zeb ’e became and Zeb ’e stays an’ a good strong man ’e is an’ a good ’usband to my sister.’

  ‘And dare I ask if Septimus Grave bestowed a name on your sister?’ Dickens remembered that Occy had not named either of the two girls born to his lunatic father.

  ‘’E did – as I told you, ’e was powerful disappointed when the girls came – paid no attention at all so my mother made the choice. First, there was Mary – she died with the rest, of the fever, as I told you, an’ my sister –’ Occy drank again. He was a born storyteller, knowing exactly when to heighten the suspense.

  ‘Occy, the suspense is killing me. What is your sister’s name?’

  ‘Well,’ Occy grinned, ‘that’s a story, too – you’d ’ardly credit it.’

  ‘I think I might – after all you’ve told me.’

  ‘As I said, old Septimus didn’t pay attention when the girls was born an’ ’e didn’t seem to notice Mary at all, but ’e did, it seems, come to, as it were, when my sister was to be christened. My mother, a sensible body, had chosen Meg, but ’e, the lunatic, cries out that it was a servant’s name not the name of a gentleman’s daughter – not the name for a scholar’s daughter – and so, at the church, when the reverend asks what the child’s to be called, ’e cries out “Euphemia” – Greek apparently. Not that ’e ever spoke to the child after so ’e ’ad no occasion to use the name. Meg woulder done just as well. Anyways, she’s Effie now, an’ it suits ’er fine.’

  ‘So Euphemia married Zerubbabel,’ Dickens laughed, ‘who became Effie and Zeb. Any children?’

  ‘Mary, Gabriel, Michael and Peter! ’Ow about that! Now, I’ll take you to see them and we can find out what ’e knows.’

  Monmouth Street was the centre of the old clothes trade; its emporia, however, were generally depressing, filthy rag shops hung about with musty dresses, faded corduroy trousers, canvas waistcoats, worn boots which had a habit of kicking at the unwary head of a customer who might find himself entangled in the billowing, yellowish skirts of some ancient bridal gown, the arms of which leant down to enfold him in a ghostly embrace. The customer, horrified by his spectral bride, would struggle to free himself from the dusty cloud of net – heedless of the threat of breach of promise – only to face the wrath of some uniform jacket of moth-eaten scarlet and tarnished gilding – the enraged groom, perhaps. Could the toothless hag smoking her pipe peaceably in a broken-down basket chair really have once been the bride? Hideously malformed, tea-coloured stays were cast upon deal tables mixed up with suspiciously stained undergarments, and worn-out dancing shoes, the dancers having pirouetted elsewhere to ease their corns – and bunions, judging by the curious bulges near the frayed silken toes. The burial place of fashion, Dickens had called it.

  The second-hand clothes shops were usually foul-smelling, greasy, dirty places, the rags for sale often infected with the fever or pox which had, no doubt, carried off the former owners. But Zeb and Effie were a superior sort of dealers. Entering, Dickens found that the floor was clean, the shop carefully dusted and the goods carefully classified. The front and back doors were open so that a breeze came through to ensure that the air was, at least, breathable. Zeb Scruggs, besides selling old clothes, was a ‘translator’, meaning that he and Effie were skilled at refashioning the better parts of discarded coats, dresses and skirts into something wearable – the skirts of a coat might make a child’s cape; a miniature dress might emerge from a larger one; a skirt might make a pair of breeches for a boy or the back of a shirt could be turned into a baby’s dress.

  Zeb was at the counter turning over a cloak, too shabby for the pawn shop where it had probably spent a good deal of its working life, but possibly offering something salvageable for the translator to use. The seller was a thin, patched and darned woman. She watched Zeb with desperate hope. He gave her two shillings and out she went. Dickens noticed her gaunt face and dark eyes. She looked starved.The two shillings would mean bread today and the rent paid if she had another couple of shillings.

  ‘Not worth sixpence,’ said Zeb ruefully to Effie while folding up the cloak.

  ‘Well, she has to eat, poor woman. Sacking will have to do for her instead of the cloak. She has a boy to feed, too.’

  Zeb was a large, well-built man with dark, flashing eyes which gave him a gypsyish look, and there was strength in him, Dickens thought, of character as well as physique. Effie was like her brother, thin and wiry, and full of energy, determined to keep a respectable shop, but never a hard-faced businesswoman.

  ‘Occy, brought us a customer, have you?’ Effie smiled at Dickens. ‘I know who you are, sir. We look forward to your books. Zeb reads ’em to us – Friday night’s the night when we all sit down in the back parlour there. Some of the neighbours come in, too.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Scruggs, I am pleased that you like them.’

  ‘What brings you here, Mr Dickens? Have you come to tell us what happens next to David Copperfield? What a thing that’d be, eh, Effie?’

  ‘I am not quite sure myself,’ said Dickens.

  ‘Mr Dickens is lookin’ for a dog – a dog gone missin’. I thought you might be able to help,’ Occy put in.

  ‘Not a valuable dog – in money terms at any rate – it belongs to some young friends of mine and I want to get it back for them. There’s a boy gone, too, after the dog, I think.’

  ‘Probably taken by a lad – there’s boys who take dogs to the big thieves. It happens all the time. There’s a house down by St Giles’s, Darling Row, where I know they keep dogs. Might be a chance there, but, you know, Mr Dickens, it could be somewhere else. No ransom asked for?’

  ‘No, we’ve heard nothing. Occy mentioned dogs and rats at the King’s Head in Compton Street –’

  ‘Not likely, I said,’ interrupted Occy.

  Dickens looked at Zeb. He wanted reassurance. The idea of Poll with a rat at her throat appalled him.

  ‘Occy’s right – it’ll be a lad, I’m sure, a lad who knows where to get a bob or two. No one seen loiterin’ about the house? Exp
erienced thieves work in twos generally – the lurker hangs about waiting for his opportunity and passes the dog on to his mate.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know – the boy and the dog went missing at the same time.’

  ‘Not run away?’

  ‘No – definitely not. The boy, Scrap, is devoted to the children and to the dog. That’s why I think he’s gone to look for her.’

  ‘Let’s stick to the idea of a lad who picked her up on the chance then. I can take you to a man I know who knows the dog thieves – he might find out for you – he’ll want paying, of course, if you’re willing.’

  ‘Mr Dickens, you can’t go dressed like that – we can lend you an old coat – best to blend in, if you know what I mean,’ said practical Effie.

  They found for Dickens an old, long coat and a woollen red scarf to obscure part of his face, a pair of old spectacles to perch on his nose, and a top hat which had seen better days, its being rather worn and having part of its brim missing. He looked at himself in the greenish silver of a tarnished cheval glass and saw an old gentleman with staring eyes looking back at him – no one he knew. He took up the part of a benevolent grandfather who wanted to bring back his grandchild’s dog. He shuffled towards the mirror and the old gentleman came nearer and peered at him. He smiled at the old man; the old man smiled back with a mouth that seemed to have no teeth. ‘Ssss all right,’ he said to his audience of three. His friend Mark Lemon would have recognised him – Dickens had played Justice Shallow to Lemon’s Falstaff – and here was Shallow come to life again.

  Effie, Occy and Zeb laughed to see him so transformed.

  ‘It’s as good as a play,’ said Effie. ‘Your own wife wouldn’t know you!’

  Occy went back to his crossing, and Zeb and Dickens made their way to find the man who would, Dickens hoped, be the means of bringing back Poll, and Scrap who, surely, could not be far away from her.

  4

  RATS’ CASTLE

  It was becoming dark now, but Zeb Scruggs knew his way through the honeycomb of alleys, blind courts and tunnels that made up the area of St. Giles’s with its straggling lines of half tumbledown houses with rags and paper for windows, mysterious shops with their extraordinary jumble of goods: rags, bones, bits of old iron, clothes so ancient that they must have been there for a century or more; with its terrible foetid cellars where resided families living their underground lives like troglodytes. Knots of filthy, half-naked children played mysterious games with stones in the gutters, heedless of the slime or the cold. A helpless drunk lay insensible in a doorway, a woman screamed after a running man who fled into a passageway, vanishing into darkness, and a man with two dead rabbits swinging from one hand shook his fist at an urchin who tried to grab them. A jaunty figure in masculine clothes but with a girl’s face winked at Dickens. Man or woman, it was hard to tell. A man with a rudely made coffin on his back stared doubtfully at the hole in the ground where the dead one waited. The smell everywhere was of rotting sewage, decaying food, and filthy humanity. Dickens had been here before, and had written of the sickening smells, the slimily overflowing houses and cellars, and he thought again, with the same astonishment, that only across the road were the great shops of Oxford Street and Regent Street, and the grand houses where men and women, made up of flesh and bone as were the denizens of St Giles’s, dined in state, and green parks where the rich strolled away their Sundays – ten minutes’ walk to a different planet.

  The alleys were narrower now, the buildings almost meeting in the middle so that it was like walking through a tunnel. Occasionally, the light of an oil lamp stared at them through a bleared window, and sometimes there was a feeble light above a doorway where a wretched figure huddled, the face a nightmare in the sickly light. Shadows came and went, real or not, it was hard to tell, so thin and black were they, and so silent as they passed. It was sinister here and Dickens was glad of the company of Zeb Scruggs, large and solid by his side.

  They went into a lane where grimy light spilled onto the street and groups of men gathered at the windows and doors. Here was the ancient public house, named Rats’ Castle for its customers were chiefly thieves, prigs, cracks, coiners and laggers and their molls. It was built on the site of the leper hospital, founded in the eleventh century by Queen Matilda. And still the home of outcasts, thought Dickens.

  The place was packed with men, all ragged, filthy-looking vagabonds, sitting on benches at scarred deal tables. It was lit by tallow candles, giving off a dirty, feverish light and all smoking, and wax dripping down the brown walls. It smelt of unwashed bodies, stale grease and old cooking. No one looked at them – an old man in a long coat and a brawny black-eyed ruffian – why should they? Zeb looked about him and slid through the crowd, helping his old man who tottered feebly, and smiled his toothless smile. They took a table at which sat a young man nursing a pot of ale.

  ‘Zeb, wot brings yer to the Rats’ of a cold night. Got sumfink ter sell?’ The young man giggled, showing blackened stumps of teeth.

  ‘Tommy Titfer, I wants somthin’ and this ’ere gent’s willin’ to pay fer it.’

  Dickens noticed how Zeb’s speech had coarsened – no doubt to match that of the aptly named Tommy who wore no hat but whose red hair stood upon his head in a high quiff which owed more to nature than to art. He was altogether an odd-looking young man with a shiny weasel face and sliding eyes which had something oysterish in their glistening opaqueness.

  ‘Wotcher want, then?’ The eyes slid away and back again.

  Zeb leaned forward to whisper his request. ‘The gent – no names, mind – ’as a little girl wot wants ’er dog back. Gone missin’ three days or so back – little thing it is – not worth anythin’ ’cept to the kiddie o’course. White with brown ears and brown patches. Answers to name of Poll. Any chance of yer findin’ out?’

  ‘I could. No names mind.’ He winked and leered. ‘Don’t wanter upset me contacts. Wot’s it worth?’

  ‘For yer, Tommy, five shillin’s, and fer whoever’s got the dog, a sovereign, maybe – mind it’s not a pedigree so tell ’em we’ll pay wot’s fair.’

  ‘Right. Brass up front fer me, if yer will. There’s a lot of dishonest folk about these days. Promise yer the money, an’ then yer niver sees ’em again – an’ all that work fer nuffink. It’s an’ ’ard world an’ that’s a fact.’ Tommy sighed, regretting the wicked ways of the world in which he found himself.

  ‘Well, old gentleman, are yer willin’ to give my friend Tommy ’ere ’is five shillins?’ Zeb asked. He was in cahoots with Titfer now. Zeb could act a part when needed.

  The old gentleman was ready to part with the money and took out his purse, somewhat injudiciously, considering the company. Tommy’s eyes slid and narrowed when he saw the purse. Perhaps he could ask for more later when he brought some information.

  ‘Come back ’ere tomorrer – same time. I’ll see wot I can find out.’

  It was time to go. It was something, thought Dickens, Tommy Titfer might bring news. He did not know, but what else could he do?

  They pushed their way out into the street where all in a moment a fight erupted, flashing out as if someone had thrown a taper on dying coals. They were suddenly in the midst of flying fists, kicking feet, animal grunts and piercing yells, shoved and barged, turned this way and that as if they were caught in a whirlpool. Dickens saw Zeb go down suddenly like a felled tree. Then a meaty fist the size of a hock of ham shot perilously near his nose. He dodged away, snatching at the man’s waistcoat to keep his balance. He felt his heel slip in the mud. The owner of the fist roared madly as he and Dickens were whirled in a crazy dance. Then they were down, locked in a stinking embrace, Dickens turning so that he fell on top of his assailant rather than underneath. The man’s head hit the stony ground with a thud. Blood spurted. Dickens jumped away, not frightened, more excited by the clamour and his own skill in evading the punch. Then he was plucked by his coat, seemingly tossed back into the melee only to pop out like a cor
k, his arms flailing. He felt the kick in his back, the sickening dizziness as his feet slid, then he was rolling, covering his head, but the kicks kept coming until the attacker was dragged away by another whose fist broke his nose. Someone trod on Dickens’s hand and a last kick rolled him away. Then there was only suffocating darkness.

  Somewhere a police rattle sounded, sharp and urgent. There were heavy feet running down the alley. Dickens did not hear any of it, nor did he feel the cunning fingers rifling his pockets for the purse that he had slipped into the pocket of the long coat. Tommy Titfer found it easily and slid away down the narrowest of passages by the Rats’ Castle. But, no one saw the great hand suddenly pinning him to the wall; no one heard the hoarse, mad, whispering voice.

  ‘Seen yer, seen yer follerin’ me. Wot are yer? Yer shan’t foller me.’

  Tommy Titfer gasped, terrified. ‘I don’t fink so, I don’t know yer. Gerroff me, yer brute.’

  No witness saw Tommy Titfer try to wriggle away, but he was held too fast against the rough black wall. The man’s hugeness filled the passage. There was no escape. The vast hand squeezed Tommy’s throat, tighter and tighter. When it let go, the limp body slid down the wall into the oozing mud. No one saw the apelike figure, a monstrous shadow of itself, shambling away, dragging its freight behind it.

  Who shall say which man’s life is worth more? The man lying by the inn wall? Tommy Titfer? He was a villain in a small way, a low, slippery creature whose life began and ended in the greasy slime of the alleys of Seven Dials. Yet later, much later, after the case was over, in a cellar, when Constable Rogers found a starving woman with scanty red hair poking from a dirty cap, and an emaciated child with a curiously high red quiff, he felt only pity for her hacking grief.

  Outside Rats’ Castle, which had plunged into sudden darkness at the sound of the police rattles, Zeb Scruggs came to, wondering what had happened to Mr Dickens. Blimey! He hoped he wasn’t responsible for the death of the most famous man in London. He felt panic, heard the police rattle, and found himself alone, the fighters gone, scrabbling like rats into holes. Someone lay by the wall, the head covered by a long coat, a familiar red scarf trailing like a line of blood in the dust.