Death at Hungerford Stairs

by J C Briggs

  ‘She’s in bed, Mr Dickens,’ Effie told him. ‘Though, she doesn’t sleep – just lies there with her eyes closed or sometimes just staring into the dark. Won’t eat, neither. Mrs Feak’s been to see her – the nurse.’

  Sam’s Sybil of Star Street, Dickens thought, Feak’s redoubtable mother. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She’s dying, Mr Dickens. That’s what she said. Nothing to be done. Mrs Feak said she’d seen it before – when a body wants to die, then they does – dying of heartbreak, she says, and it’s true. We’ll just keep her here until …’ Effie’s eyes filled. ‘She’ll not wake up one o’ these days – that’s what’ll happen.’

  She took Dickens upstairs to the small room where a dim oil lamp burnt. Shadow time, thought Dickens, seeing the dark coming in from the corners of the room to gather round the little bed with its white counterpane. The feeble light showed Mrs Hart with her eyes closed, the pale face unmoving and her thin, almost transparent hands, still on the whiteness – like a marble effigy of herself. They went out of the quiet room, leaving her to Time. Time would take her when he was ready. It would be too late for Mrs Hart when, and if, they found the murderer, but there would be justice of a kind for Robin and for Jemmy, and for the as yet unknown boy whose poor, disfigured face had, perhaps, brought about his death just as the beauty of the other two had brought about theirs.

  Murder, thought Dickens, how the single act, the knife gleaming in the dark, the poison drop in the glass, the thick hand at the slender throat, created ripples which rolled outwards to touch so many others. Did the murderer consider the harm to all those connected with his victim? No, because murder was a supremely selfish act. The murderer thought only of himself, of his own desires, his own anger, his own loss, his own hurt or rejection – never of his victims’ hurts, never of those who might also die for loss of what they had so loved. Every death, he had once written, carries to some small circle of survivors thoughts of so much omitted and so little done. What did Mrs Hart regret now? Did she think that she could have saved him, that she had not paid enough attention when he was away, out in the streets? Well, they would never know from her whom Robin had seen, who had taken him to that shaded graveyard. He followed Effie down the stairs. They trod as quietly as they could but she would not hear them even if they were to clatter their way down.

  In the shop, Sam exchanged a brief glance with Dickens who shook his head slightly. They walked to the door while Zeb put on an oilskin which made him look as if he ought to be standing on the deck of a fishing boat. He looked not unlike Mr Peggotty of Yarmouth.

  ‘She is dying,’ said Dickens sombrely. ‘Mrs Feak, your Sybil of Star Street, has been to see her and says so. It is only a matter of time.’

  ‘Then, it must be true,’ said Sam. ‘A wise woman, Mrs Feak.’ His face darkened as he thought of Mrs Hart and her poor Robin. ‘We need to find Theo and we need to know about that shawl, but if it is not Theo then I do not know – unless Mademoiselle Victorine’s so-called visitor is the answer. Zeb tells me that Robin did errands for a stationer up the street. A respectable man, he says, not likely to be our murderer. Still, I will send a man to question him. He might know something about Robin’s other acquaintances. Let’s get going.’ He looked out at the street, slushy with mud where the rain, heavier again, added to the misery of the scene.

  Zeb offered Dickens an oilskin cape. ‘Keep the worst off, Mr Dickens.’

  Dickens tied it round his shoulders, conscious suddenly of the smell of fish, and a faint whiff of the sea which reminded him of Captain Pierce and Davey – and Kip. He must get on to that tomorrow. Tomorrow – what would it bring for Theo Outfin, Oliver Wilde and Sophy?

  They went to meet Rogers and Feak who were waiting wrapped in oilskin cloaks and with a collection of bull’s-eye lanterns. Rogers, that considerate fellow, had brought one for his superintendent. Scrap was to follow them, to keep open his eyes and ears round and about the places where the policemen and Dickens would make their enquiries.

  First, a notorious gambling den down a set of precipitous stairs. It was a dank, close cellar with a deal table where cards were laid out and benches where were sitting the company of men with sallow cheeks and matted hair – men who did not seem ever to have seen the clear light of day. There were no girls or women present. There was immediate tension in the room. They knew Superintendent Jones and they recognised Rogers. Someone sniggered, a coarse, ugly sound, as Feak slipped clumsily down the last two steps. Dickens remained above, but he could see into the room; he could see Sam’s profile and he knew that his face would be set like stone and that his eyes would be flashing steel in the grimy darkness.

  ‘Playing cards, eh? Who wins? Got lucky, have you, Mr Click?’

  Eyes were lowered but Click, a thin, greasy-looking, snuffling, yellow-faced individual, essayed politeness.

  ‘Can we ’elp yer, Mr Jones, sir? No ’arm doin’ ’ere, sir, jest a light supper an’ a game o’ cards for the boys.’ The voice wheedled. ‘No ’arm, sir, to be sure.’

  ‘A light supper.’ Dickens wanted to laugh at the incongruity of such a genteel phrase. Perhaps the speaker was once a superior sort of servant who had lost his place. His sycophantic air suggested that.

  ‘I daresay not, Josiah Click. I am looking for a young man, a toff, as you might say – any toffs been here at all?’

  ‘No, sir, Mr Jones – we don’t get no toffs ’ere ’part from the Earl of Warwick, an’ yer know ’im, sir. An’ Mr Rogers – allus nice to see yer, sir.’

  The so-called Earl of Warwick stepped forward nervously, a little foolish, a little sickly, now he was the centre of attention. How he came by his appellation is uncertain, but it was what he was called – an impersonator, perhaps. He had the air of a down-and-out actor with his soiled velvet jacket and dirty shirt.

  Rogers, who knew him from old, teased the unfortunate man. ‘Take your hat off, my lord. Why, I should be ashamed if I was you – and an earl, too – to show myself to a gentleman with my hat on!’ The company roared with laughter, at ease now. What a jolly game it is, when Superintendent Jones comes down – and don’t want nobody!

  Of course, there was method in his madness. Rogers knew that while he was joking with the company, Feak was in the room beyond, searching, and the superintendent had moved, stealthy as a cat, into all the corners where his lamp would show if there were someone who did not want to be found. Feak came back – nothing, he signalled to his chief. The superintendent had seen only shadows. Rogers was still entertaining the company with his chaffing of the poor earl whose sense of humour appeared to have been filched from him or his discomfort may have arisen from the knowledge of the stolen watch in his pocket. Rogers knew, of course he did. The hand that stole in and out of the pocket gave the earl away as did the sickly grimace that he hoped would serve for a smile. But that was not what they were here for. The earl would keep. They bade goodnight and mounted the stairs, leaving the roars of laughter behind – relief?

  St Giles’s clock struck six. Scrap was outside. ‘Nuffink,’ he said, and on they went, deeper into the alleys, now mud-filled trenches where beetle-browed tenements skulked in the dark; where houses like so many rough-hewn packing cases huddled together as if shrinking from the rain. A jaundiced light showed down a foetid alley. There they went. The door was fast against them but Rogers hammered loudly until it was opened by a poor wretch of a girl. They pushed their way in to find a party on the go. Plenty of gin and ale, judging by the reeling of the singers and dancers. The music, from a wheezy piano accordion stopped as if the instrument had died suddenly of old age.

  ‘Don’t mind us,’ said the superintendent cheerfully as they made their way to the makeshift bar presided over by a sour-looking landlady whose coal-black hair appeared as a coating of lacquer on her narrow head. Feak and Rogers separated to look in the nooks and crannies of this tumbledown wreck while Sam addressed the hard-faced woman.

  ‘Looking for a gent, Mrs Brine,’ said Sam. A
vinegary name, thought Dickens. Suited her. ‘Slight, fair hair, very young face,’ Sam was saying. ‘Gone missing – family want him back. Could be a reward. Name of Theo. Know anything?’

  Mrs Brine obviously did; her shrewd eyes gleamed for a moment at the mention of a reward. She weighed up the risk – to tell or not to tell. She looked appraisingly at the policeman’s companion, a younger man with a serious, almost severe expression. Religious, pr’aps, she thought – do-gooder, most like. Dickens read her thoughts and arranged his face into a suitable expression of piety. Sam had to turn away.

  ‘We gets the toffs sometimes – lookin’ for a good time when the girls are willin’ – can’t get no such at ’ome.’ She winked, grotesquely and laughed, opening a mouth revealing blackened teeth and he smelt the gin – and decay – on her breath, but Sam steeled himself not to recoil. He waited. Don’t push. She’ll tell. ‘Your young man – girlish, ain’t ’e – dint come ’ere for Miss Laycock, yer know what I means.’

  Sam nodded. He knew who – or what – Miss Laycock was; the phrase was aptly descriptive, but he kept a straight face. Dickens managed not to laugh, contorting his face into an expression of what he hoped was incomprehension. It was a new one on him – the collector of street slang.

  Mrs Brine went on. ‘Likes boys, I ’spect, but we don’t ’ave none o’ that sort ’ere. Tell yer wot, though –’ She poured a glass of gin. ‘Want a glass? Good stuff – not dilute for me best customers.’

  Dickens declined. ‘Temperance, ma’am.’ He arranged his lips into a line of disapproval.

  Sam almost choked. Dear God, it was strong whatever it was – vitriol added perhaps? It was not uncommon and, by the look of them, Mrs Brine’s customers liked their drink strong. Still, needs must – if Maggie Brine were to talk. He drank, feeling the blood rush to his face. With heroic strength of character, he suppressed his urge to cough, confining himself to a wheezy splutter.

  ‘Good, ain’t it?’ Maggie drank another. ‘Well, I’ll tell yer – that boy, ’e came wiv some bloods – yer know the type, flashin’ their money, noisy, drunk as eels writhin’ on a slab, but ’e, yer lad, if it is ’im – I ’eard the name, I think. Teasin’ him they woz – ’e was wiv ’em and not, if yer gets me, on the edge of it all.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Dunno – abaht the girls, I think, cos ’e dint wanter go wiv Dolly over there.’

  I don’t blame him, thought Dickens as they looked at the girl Mrs Brine had pointed out. She had the build – and complexion – of a coal-heaver and looked as though she might have consumed Theo with the same relish with which she was drinking her gin. She winked at Dickens and licked her lips. He lowered his eyes modestly and turned away to see Mrs Brine looking at him mockingly.

  ‘Too big fer yer, Mister Parson – good girl is Dolly – do yer good – yer look a bit bloodless ter me an’ –’

  To Dickens’s relief the piano accordian started again and the singing resumed. Mrs Brine’s words were lost.

  Sam continued. ‘Were they here last night?’

  ‘Nah, sorry, Mr Jones, wish I could ’elp yer.’

  Sam leaned towards her, knowing that she would not want his words overheard. ‘So do I, Mrs Brine, but if you do hear anything, remember, there’s a reward – you could slip down to Bow Street – discreetly – on your way to market.’

  She understood. He knew she would not want to advertise her going to Bow Street, but the reward might tempt her.

  ‘Temperance, forsooth,’ he said to Dickens as they went out. ‘Lucky for you – I nearly choked to death.’

  ‘I know – I saw. You are a man of heroic proportions, Sam. Saved me from Doll Tearsheet there. I might have been eaten alive.’

  Out in the alley, Scrap was waiting. He had news. He had heard talk about a boy called Nose – cos he hadn’t got one – so the urchins said. The boy was missing, taken by the giant, some said, but there was no talk of his being seen with a toff – nothing at all. One night he was there and then he wasn’t. Though, they all knew about the fire. One lad thought he’d seen Nose there, but then he was gone. Interesting, thought Sam, that there was no suggestion of his being befriended by a toff. Perhaps the death of Nose was, as they had thought, an angry reaction to his appearance. He was not what the murderer wanted – though, as yet, they did not really know what he wanted.

  Zeb Scruggs and Occy Grave came to meet them at St Giles’s. They had been at Rats’ Castle where no one had anything to tell them though Zeb had met their old friend Weazen, looking, if anything, filthier than before. He had been ill, he had told them, sick with fever. Nevertheless, he had promised to keep a look-out and good-hearted Zeb had given him sixpence on account.

  ‘Poor devil,’ said Zeb. ‘I have to feel sorry for him, though more than a minute or two in his company turns my stomach.’

  They carried on, splitting into pairs, searching the alleys, the lanes, the little tomb-like courts, the whistling shops – illegal drinking dens, the common lodging houses, empty houses, and yards where men, women and children crouched like wild beasts under broken-down sheds and outhouses with rats for company. Scrap disappeared down cellar steps, found urchins to ask who were playing football with a ball of rags in a ginnel, talked to women sitting on front steps, asked the pieman whose stand was near the church, questioned the baked potato seller while warming himself by the little four-legged tin stove, resisted the temptation to buy one even though the smell sent his taste buds reeling, and caught up with Rogers and Feak in Dulcimer Street near the alley from where Rogers was coming, having looked again at the burnt-out house and squeezed his way out of Harry Sutch’s shed.

  Meanwhile, Dickens and Jones were making their way up a set of broken stairs in a tumbledown building situated in a miserable rain-flooded court. The sound of shouting and a woman’s scream had caused them to turn into the alley that led to the court. They heard the sound of running feet. Whoever had screamed had gone. They were about to walk away when the sound of breaking glass stopped them. Something was hurled through a window and landed with a smash on the stones. A bottle. Sam raised his bull’s-eye lantern. In the yellow light thrown up on the window they could see the figure of a man. He seemed to be pushing at the broken glass. A slight figure – young, perhaps. Then he was shouting.

  ‘No, no, let me go. He’s there, I see him. Let me go to him.’ The voice of a gentleman. Theo Outfin?

  Someone pulled him back. Someone smaller – possibly a woman. Dickens and Jones made for the door. But they had to go gingerly up the worm-eaten stairs, Dickens holding on to the rickety bannister, Sam shining his light downwards where they could see the holes in the treads. They could hear voices, muted now, the shouting over. A door crashed open. A sudden glimpse of light, but flickering and shadowy. A clattering of feet and then someone shot down the stairs, stumbling, almost falling. Sam seized Dickens by the arm and thrust him against the wall. In the light of his lamp, they saw briefly a white face, two black holes for eyes and a snarling, dog-like mouth. And the glint of a knife.They felt the figure’s passing. The figure fell down the last few stairs, picked itself up, and vanished through the open door.

  ‘Sorry,’ whispered Sam. ‘You all right?’

  Dickens nodded, shaken by what he had seen and how close he had been to collision with whatever had passed them.

  They stood still, listening to the darkness above. Someone had closed the door.There were voices again. Someone shouted. A man. The sound of madness, Dickens thought. Then a lower voice, trying to soothe.

  Sam signalled to Dickens that they should go on. He shone his lamp upwards, so that they could see where they were going. A few more steps would take them up to the landing. They stood outside the door. It was quieter now, the voices barely heard. Sam turned the handle.

  They found themselves in an opium den, filled with a kind of brown fog, where they looked upon two somnolent forms lying on their filthy cots, murmuring and chattering in whatever nightmares the drug had induced
. They could feel the cold air coming through the broken window, but those on the beds seemed not to notice.

  Under the window, on a bed, lay a young man. Sitting on the bed with his head in her lap was a young woman in a ragged shift which hung off her thin shoulders, exposing her breasts. Sam lowered the lamp, but she didn’t seem to care, only looked at him with dull eyes.

  The young man began to shout again. ‘No, no, not yet, not yet!’ The girl looked down at him, her black, matted hair covering her face, but she stroked his face with surprising tenderness as if he were a child in a bad dream.

  What fear possessed him? Dickens wondered, gazing at the tortured face. The face was young, fine-featured and his clothes, though terribly rumpled, were those of a young man of means. What had brought him to this pass? But, and he felt a relief that made his knees weak, it was not Theo Outfin. Sam heard him breathe out and saw him shake his head. Not the man they wanted.

  In the corner by a curious-looking screen, a Chinese man was blowing at a kind of pipe. They could see a pinpoint of red light which swelled as he blew then died down again. The slanting eyes looked at them and the pale, thin-lipped mouth grinned as he offered the pipe. Sam shook his head. No point in saying anything. They just looked at the occupants of the cots – only four, two Chinese, the Englishman and the girl. This was a small concern, not like the packed, sweating dens near the docks. And, thought Sam, he would have it closed down. The Chinaman could go back to Wapping with his customers, and one of his constables could escort the young man home – if he had not gone already. And the girl? They’d have to bring her to the station. She’d have no home, that was certain.

  They went out, back down the stairs and heard the nine strokes of St Giles’s clock telling them that the case was hopeless. They returned to the churchyard where Rogers and the others would meet them. Nothing – not a word, not a sign. Theo Outfin had vanished. Or not – they could not look everywhere. Their search had concentrated on the small area around the scene of the fire but he could easily have gone further afield. Why not? He might be asleep in a bed in a grand house belonging to one of his set. He might be asleep in some foul lodging in a hidden yard. They might have passed it. He might be dead.