The Street Philosopher

by Matthew Plampin

  ‘First there were spikes for the Crimean railway; then heavy buckles for horse artillery; then more buckles, this time for the cavalry, many thousands of them; then, after the war, buckles for the police, for fire engines and coal carts, for cabs and coach-makers and hauliers of all descriptions. The Foundry has enjoyed a late flourishing, expanding to more than ten times its original size. Strong, affordable Norton buckles on every saddle, belt and harness in England–that is my father’s stated goal.’ Jemima smiled wryly. ‘Last year Punch christened him the Buckle King.’

  Mr Kitson had managed to tear his attention from the print, and was suppressing his agitation by listening to her account with an absolute focus. ‘That I saw,’ he said.

  Jemima’s smile faded. ‘Of course, a price was exacted for all this good fortune.’

  The street philosopher looked at her inquiringly.

  ‘My husband, Mr Kitson–Anthony James. He died of cholera at Balaclava.’

  Her companion flinched, the fine web of lines around his eyes tightening. ‘I am sorry, madam. I was aware that you had lost your husband, I confess, but I had no idea that…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Please accept my apologies.’

  Jemima waved this away. ‘You were not to know, Mr Kitson. The circumstances of Anthony’s death are hardly common knowledge. And I have received enough apologies, sir, and enough pity, to last me several lifetimes. The truth is that my husband was quite determined to go, and would not hear otherwise. He was my father’s immediate subordinate at the Foundry, and considered his presence on the expedition vital to its success.’ Her voice quickened slightly. ‘There was a great fashion for it, do you not remember, amongst a certain type of gentleman. They rushed out to the Crimea with a boyish zeal, hungry for adventure, as if it was all nothing but larks.’

  Mr Kitson said nothing.

  Bridles jangled outside, followed by a coachman’s cry; a lantern flashed across the office window. The carriage had finally arrived from Norton Hall. The desk clerk, no doubt looking forward to solitude, darted out of the door and began berating the coachman for his tardiness. Their time together was fast expiring.

  Jemima sighed, putting a hand to her brow. ‘Oh, do forgive me. I sound as if I am still mired in events well over two years past.’ She looked at him. ‘I have very much enjoyed our conversation this evening, Mr Kitson.’

  He inclined his head. ‘As have I, Mrs James. My thanks again for the kind invitation.’

  The clerk and coachman entered the office; the latter tipped his cap and then they began loading Jemima and Bill’s packages onto the carriage. Bill’s absence, being far from unusual, was not queried.

  ‘Will you be attending the opening ceremony on Tuesday, sir?’

  ‘I would be there, madam, even if my employer did not require it of me.’ His eyebrow raised a fraction. ‘I take it you will be going also, despite your reservations?’

  ‘Like yourself, Mr Kitson, I am obliged to attend, but on pain of disinheritance. What of the ball that evening, at the Fairbairn house–the Polygon? Will you be there as well?’

  He hesitated, as if unable to remember. Jemima regretted having asked; it did seem improbable that a society writer from the Evening Star would be welcome at such a gathering.

  ‘No matter,’ she said lightly. ‘I shall look out for you in the Art Treasures Exhibition. Farewell, Mr Kitson.’

  The carriage pulled away. Jemima settled back into her seat, watching Mr Kitson leave the office and cross Mosley Street. The stains on his shirt had dried to a muddy brown. He stopped on a corner and cast a last look at her carriage; then he stepped away into the shadows, hunching his shoulders against the evening’s chill.

  Jemima’s mind teemed with questions about her enigmatic new acquaintance. What lay behind his attitude towards the man he had saved, his strange reticence about his time at the London Courier, and his extraordinary reaction to those prints? That this street philosopher bore a burden was plain to see, for all his sardonic detachment. The carriage left Mosley Street, rocking as it wheeled around across dung-caked cobbles of Piccadilly. Jemima looked out at the winding lines of gaslights and the people milling beneath, her thoughts turning to the bundle of old Couriers that she had packed away at the back of her wardrobe. She would find answers.

  3

  The study door closed with a deep click. Charles Norton, proprietor of the great Norton Foundry and employer of close to a thousand souls, dropped his hand from the moulded brass door-handle to the key that jutted out beneath, and turned it decisively. He then walked along an expansive bookcase to the window. In the darkness, he could just see the two gaslights mounted at the end of his drive. Back in the room, the visitor shifted position, with a slight suggestion of impatience; on the window pane before him, the black silhouette of a shoulder moved before the lambent reflection of the study fire.

  ‘My thanks, Mr Twelves, for coming out to Cheetham Hill at this hour. I would not have summoned you if it was not urgent.’

  There was a short silence. Then, slowly, the visitor drew in his breath. ‘I’m sure that is the case, Mr Norton.’ His voice was low and nasal, with a heavy Mancunian accent. ‘And besides, midnight is not so late for one in my trade.’

  Norton turned around. Twelves stood before the massy desk that dominated the study. He was tall and powerfully built, clean-shaven with close-cropped hair. Every piece of his clothing bar an over-starched shirt was black, or at least had been when first purchased. He held a battered stew-pan hat in his hands, and was regarding the labour-lord before him as if all his wealth and accomplishment were nothing–as if he were naught but a fat old fool not even worth the kicking.

  ‘You enjoy something of a reputation, Mr Twelves. Men I trust have told me that you handle the matters set before you with both professionalism and discretion. My expectations are high indeed.’

  Norton paused, allowing for a polite interjection, for an earnest assurance that he would not be disappointed. Twelves said nothing. He frowned at the man’s brazen impudence. The very last thing he needed was yet another truculent employee.

  ‘A business associate of mine was attacked earlier this evening,’ he continued, a little briskly, ‘in the centre of the city. He—’

  ‘The soldier,’ Twelves interrupted flatly. ‘Found off Mosley Street just after eight. Major Archibald Wray–one of Colonel Bennett’s men. Admitted to the Infirmary.’

  Norton paused again, impressed despite himself by this parade of information. ‘That is correct, yes.’

  Twelves shrugged. ‘Even odds on ’im lasting the night is what I hear. They say the attacker was a cripple–a hideous twisted thing, like old King Richard or summat from a fairy tale.’

  This is a colourful fellow indeed, Norton thought as he took the note from his desk. It had been written in a strained hand, the pen strokes scratched across the paper, and in one corner there was a smeared, bloody thumbprint. The author had managed only three slanting, wobbling words: Kitson is here.

  He showed it to his visitor. ‘Wray sent me this. From his hospital bed.’

  News of the assault, along with the note, had been brought to Norton at around ten o’clock. He had been dining alone, his daughter having retired early with a headache, his son having stayed on in town like the dissolute popinjay he was proving himself to be. After half an hour’s anxious deliberation, he had sent for Mr Twelves.

  The investigator glanced down but did not take it from him. ‘Ye do not know who Kitson is, then, Mr Norton.’ This was not a question. ‘But the fact that the Major wrote this in what might well be ’is last moments on Earth rightly concerns you. Per’aps Kitson’s this cripple, per’aps he’s not. But either way, he’s important–and you need to discover who he is, what he wants, and most of all how he can be dealt with.’ Twelves sounded distinctly bored by his own summary of the situation.

  Norton nodded. ‘I must stress again the need for discretion, Twelves. Very few people are aware of my connection with Wray, and I would keep
it that way. I cannot chance any interruption to my affairs, not now.’

  The investigator took out a notebook and began jotting things down in an economical hand. ‘Aye, the timing is rather poor, an’t it, Mr Norton? The eve of your Exhibition, with the Prince Consort coming to town, God save ’im.’ Twelves turned a page. He continued to write for a moment before snapping the book shut and returning it to his pocket. ‘We will find this Kitson for ye. I guarantee it. My comrades and I are like the mighty Argus. Once we turn our attention to a subject, nothing whatsoever escapes our gaze.’ He spoke matter-of-factly, without pride. ‘And once we ’ave ’im, Mr Norton, what then?’

  The labour-lord blinked, running a hand through his white whiskers. ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Our Mr Kitson, I would wager, is bad news for the Norton Foundry. Running up against a man such as yourself, well, that makes ’im like a second Ajax, don’t it, defying the lightning. And the end result will surely be the same.’

  Norton scowled at his visitor uncomprehendingly. This Twelves, he was fast coming to realise, was something of an autodidact–that insufferable breed of working-class man who insists on flaunting his limited, self-acquired learning at every possible opportunity. Which was all well and good, but Norton could not see exactly how this precious learning had served him. His profession, if it could properly be termed thus, was by any yardstick a shameful way of earning a crust.

  ‘He will be brought down,’ Twelves enlarged, ‘down low. It could ’appen sooner rather than later, if ye catch my meaning, with nothing about it that’d attract any attention to speak of. Manchester can swallow a man like you wouldn’t believe.’ He picked at his hat’s narrow brim with a fingernail. ‘Why postpone the inevitable, Mr Norton?’

  Somewhat taken aback by this proposal, Norton sat heavily in the leather-bound chair behind the desk. He reached for a silver paper knife and began pressing its point against the palm of his hand, trying to disguise his alarm at how casually murder had entered their discussion. ‘I… applaud your enthusiasm, Mr Twelves. For now, though, just discover what you can.’

  Twelves, taking this equivocation as weakness, eyed him with cool, contemptuous pity. ‘As ye wish, Mr Norton.’ He put on his hat. ‘Ye will hear from me soon. A good night to ye, sir.’

  The investigator left. Charles Norton stared up at a display case of shining buckles mounted on the study wall, seized by a constricting sense of foreboding that threatened to suffocate him where he sat.

  The Valley of the Alma,

  Crimean Peninsula

  September 1854

  1

  Lieutenant-Colonel Boyce rode the line on a black mare, the points of his moustache jutting out into the clear midday air like a pair of tusks, waiting for the order to advance.

  ‘Look at that cunt,’ muttered Private Cregg, scratching at his sweat-darkened armpit. ‘Just look at ’im. Thinks ’e’s king, gen’ral and pri’ minister all rolled up inter one. God on the bleedin’ throne.’ He paused to spit a sour pellet of well-chewed tobacco through a gap in his blackened teeth. ‘The cunt.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed those who crouched or sat around him, ‘the cunt.’ They were careful to keep their voices down. The officers of the 99th, although deaf to complaints about the lack of decent rations and shelter, had remarkably good hearing whenever anybody had a bad word to say about the Lieutenant-Colonel. Dozens had been flogged raw for such indiscretion. Dan Cregg, however, wasn’t bothered by the lash. They’d done him three times already since the day they set sail from Old England, and would do him as many times again, most likely. He’d erred countless times in his life, and considered his stubborn refusal to learn from these experiences to be bold, manly defiance. He would name things as he saw them, by God, and to hell with them all.

  Coming to the end of the 99th, Boyce wheeled his mare about and started back again. Cregg squinted, lifting up his gun as if preparing to fire. ‘It’d be so bleedin’ easy,’ he sneered. ‘Bam! And one less toff cunt in the world, drinkin’ up all the brandy.’

  There was a low, nervous chuckle. Cregg could be trouble, but today his comrades welcomed his disrespectful talk, if only as a distraction from the scene that stretched out before them. A wide, gently sloping plain, dotted with small copses and the occasional vineyard, led down some two miles to a hamlet of crude stone houses and barns. Behind this, fringed with trees, was the narrow, brownish River Alma. Rising up abruptly on its opposite bank were the Heights. To the men of the 99th, who were mostly from the south of England, these heights seemed positively mountainous, a daunting climb indeed; but climb them they must, for up there, like a dark burn across the soft green hillsides, was the enemy. The soldiers found their eyes returning to the massed ranks of Russians time and time again. For nearly two weeks they had been kept in constant expectation of an enemy attack; and yet here the bastards were, dug well into the perfect defensive position, waiting patiently in the warm sunshine. The redcoats swallowed hard, wiping their clammy palms on their trousers.

  It was towards his own men, however, and not the Russians, that Lieutenant-Colonel Boyce’s gaze repeatedly wandered. Like him, they were in full dress uniform; squirming and complaining, as the common soldier was so wont to do, tugging gracelessly at their tight tunics, and the leather chin-straps of their shakos, but smart and correct. Boyce had the junior officers well trained. Any attempt by a private to undo a button, or take off his helmet, would immediately be halted, and the miscreant’s name taken for punishment.

  If only the same rules could be applied to the other ranks, he thought angrily, as his eye snagged on the solid figure of Major Maynard, who stood at the edge of the 99th’s battalion with a telescope in his hands, scanning the Heights. Boyce had made his desire for dress uniform quite plain at the regimental briefing that morning. And his own costume, from the shining leather of his boots to the plump ostrich feather bobbing on his cocked hat, perfectly demonstrated the sartorial magnificence available to the field officer prepared to invest in his wardrobe.

  Yet Maynard’s attire was mixed and decidedly well-worn: a shell jacket, dull boots, threadbare trousers, and a plain undress cap. The overall effect left one in no doubt about his plebeian origins. He looks exactly like what he is, the Lieutenant-Colonel thought–the son of a costermonger, who has wormed his way into Her Majesty’s Army like a fat maggot into an apple, instead of purchasing his place like a gentleman. Boyce directed his mare towards the unfortunate Major, his fury mounting.

  Madeleine watched the heated exchange between the two officers from the side of a low hill, just behind the main body of the Allied Army. Her husband, who was some distance from where she sat, seemed merely a little scarlet-faced doll, gesticulating with his tiny arms. With a sigh, she raised the gold opera glasses that lay in her lap. The cool metal touched briefly against the top of her cheek, just below the eye; and there Nathaniel was, glaring at poor Maynard as if confronting a child-murderer. Their argument was short-lived. Nathaniel rode away suddenly, cutting the Major off in mid-sentence.

  A large group of officers’ wives were sitting close to Madeleine, their backs straight as plumb lines, their noses lifted high in perpetual disdain. They cast frequent glances at her, their faces showing a mixture of supercilious curiosity and cold dislike. Beyond them, on the top of the hill, were the British generals and their aides, of whom there seemed to be a great many. Madeleine had no idea who any of them were, besides Lord Raglan, and that was only on account of his missing arm. That limb, as she was regularly reminded by Nathaniel, was lost at Waterloo, to a French cannon-ball. He would say this in the most accusatory manner, as if it was somehow her fault; but all she knew about the battle of Waterloo, besides the fact that Wellington’s men prevailed and the French were soundly beaten, was that it took place a very long time ago. You could tell this, in fact, from a single look at the British commander-in-chief. Drawn and withered, and clearly exhausted, Raglan was an old man. His voice, which drifted down the hill occasionally, was
demure, gentle, frail even. That is not a leader’s voice, Madeleine thought.

  She did not know what to make of this day. She understood, of course, that there was to be a great battle. All around the hill on which she sat, there were soldiers, many thousands of them, the British in red to the left, the French in blue to the right–allies now, united against a common foe. Beyond the French Army, out to sea, was a flotilla of battleships, ominously still, their cannon trained on the Heights. Heavy guns were being carted up behind the infantry, to pound the distant redoubts and earthworks within which the Russians lurked. Surely, a voice inside her protested, this was to be a terrible thing. Surely very many men would be killed. Surely Richard, who was down there somewhere, doing his duty to the Courier and the British public, was in terrible danger.

  But spirits on that hillside were high. The other wives were talking amongst themselves with calm assurance, even laughing from time to time in the nasal, strangulated manner of English ladies. They were not behaving at all like women who, in a few short hours, might be widows. They discoursed at length on the Russian Army, how it was nothing but a disorganised rabble, a rag-tag assemblage of half-starved peasants, criminals and savages, marshalled by a degenerate aristocracy, all corrupted by their perverted religion. They confidently anticipated that this miserable band would crumble before the hard steel of British resolve; that victory would be both easy and fast. Madeleine looked out at the vast allied force, and made herself believe it.