Bill swept into a reception room, his silk dressing gown billowing around him, intending to throw open its patio doors, go out on to the lawn and feel the morning sun on his face. He shed his shoes and stockings before leaving the house. The grass was still damp with the last droplets of dew, but had a wonderful warmth and softness, sinking under his bare white toes like a quilt. For a moment, as the sun’s rays hit him, his entire world dissolved in fiery brightness. Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked down to the willow lake at the lawn’s end. His favourite gardener was at work among the bulrushes, already in his shirt-sleeves, his bronzed arms rippling as he dragged some driftwood to the shore.
He was filled with anticipation, excitement almost, about the evening ahead. Things had not been going so well of late for Freddie Keane and himself. Bill reckoned that their fathers had been plotting together; concerted moves were certainly being made to press both young men into their respective family firms. This was an anathema to Bill, but he was far better equipped to fight against it than his friend. Keane simply did not have the strength of spirit to weather such assaults and was allowing them to preoccupy him utterly. He was unable to think or talk of anything but his father’s business plans. Although his knowledge of the details was scant, he remembered enough of what had been said to be able to predict the end of his life, properly speaking, and the commencement of an unbearable waking death.
But Bill was not inclined to worry about this. A good deal more than Keane’s pouts were required to spoil the prospect of the Belle Vue on a summer’s evening. They had not been there in some months. It was an easy place to move in, and an easy place indeed to meet like-minded acquaintances. After nightfall, away from the pavilion and the dancing boards, there were a great many secluded corners where sport could be had without fear of interruption.
Bill found that he looked forward to the more conventional pleasures of the place as well; to the rare sights, the drinks, and the dancing. Keane would be distracted, for a few hours at least, and Jemima would forget her anger and her misgivings completely once she was reunited with her street philosopher. Bill was quite certain of this. This little trip was exactly what was needed for all three of them.
He looked back at Norton Hall. Its western side was a slab of blue shadow, the dark windows seeming to contain a vast quantity of filthy water, as if the house was nothing but an enormous brick rain tank. Bill imagined smashing one on the ground floor, releasing a bursting cascade out on to the lawn, and watching the level drop in all the windows around it. This notion was in his mind so strongly he actually had to stop himself from stooping down and plucking a stone from a path that bordered the grass.
As he was gazing at this window, a sallow face floated to its surface–a square face, with a narrow mouth and round, black eyes. It was one of his father’s hired men, the leader in fact; Bill recognised him from the company outing to the Exhibition. For a long moment, they contemplated one another. Then the hired man turned away.
‘He beat you, Mr Twelves. Evaded you; gave you the slip. That’s the rub, is it not?’
Twelves adjusted his hold on his stew-pan hat. His expressionless manner did not leave him, but Norton could tell that he was profoundly annoyed. The man’s natural arrogance had been undermined by unequivocal failure. Charles found that he was rather enjoying himself, but was glad that the solid mass of his desk was between him and the black-suited investigator.
‘God knows, it was a simple enough task. One would think that a man with your reputation would be able to do such a thing with ease.’
Twelves fixed him with a dispassionate stare. ‘My employees let me down, Mr Norton. Ye know what that’s like. I saw yours in the Exhibition, streaming out of those halls like the Jews after Moses, with nary a thought for the coin it’d cost you.’
Charles shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He did not like to think of the Foundry visit, and it pained him to recollect that this unsavoury fellow had witnessed it all.
‘Most of ’em what go ’ave been reacting the same way, if it’s any consolation. Pearls before swine, Mr Norton.’ Twelves’ mouth twitched into the very slightest of sneers. ‘Down my way, they complain that working people can’t afford to attend the Exhibition. But they can afford the American Circus at Ordsall, for the same money. I don’t see any going thirsty either, if ye follow my meaning.’
Norton sat forward. Twelves was managing to turn their discourse away from his own shortcomings. ‘You have not been able to find him since, have you?’
The investigator remained outwardly unperturbed. ‘Ishmaels like Richard Cracknell are usually pretty good at hiding themselves away. He’ll appear again soon enough.’
‘That may be so, but a chance has appeared for you to redeem yourself before then.’ Norton cleared his throat. ‘My daughter came to me this morning requesting that she be allowed to go to the Belle Vue Gardens tonight. In the company of my son and his friend Alfred Keane.’
‘So the son is involved as well as the daughter.’
The brute was striking back at him now, striking back with an expert touch. ‘It would seem so.’
Without altering his tone or his features in the slightest, Twelves managed to radiate malicious satisfaction. ‘That is awful, Mr Norton. Both your offspring, your own flesh, as perfidious as Caesar Borgia. My sympathies.’
Norton tried to ignore him. ‘My daughter obviously intends to meet with Kitson in the gardens somewhere. I think we can safely assume that Cracknell will be present as well. They will be attempting to draw her into their despicable schemes once more.’
Twelves’ eyes were wandering coldly over the bookshelves behind Charles’s desk. ‘And what d’ye want us to do?’
The labour-lord put a hand to his brow. ‘Watch them congregate. Ascertain the extent of my son’s involvement. Wait until they are all together.’ He spoke slowly and deliberately, choosing his words with care. ‘Then you are to act. I want you to do to Cracknell what you were supposed to last time.’
Twelves had taken out his notebook. ‘Only that? Surely more is warranted now, Mr Norton?’ He plainly wanted revenge on the man who had embarrassed him.
Charles looked out at the dense, layered canopy of a cedar of Lebanon, and the gravel driveway that snaked beneath it. ‘Do what I ask, Mr Twelves, and nothing more. Incapacitate him. That is all that is necessary.’
The investigator was not pleased. He wrote something down. ‘And what of the other one–the street philosopher? The same?’
Briefly, Norton thought of that day in the Exhibition–of the protests of Kitson and his daughter, and the obvious regard she held him in. All of it had seemed genuine. He was certain, however, that it was merely another manipulation, part of the grand scheme that these two demons were orchestrating against him. He nodded. ‘Afterwards, I want you to bring both my children back here. I will talk to them immediately.’
Norton smoothed his whiskers, setting his mouth in a hard line. This had to be done. The depths of their treachery had to be exposed once and for all. And it would cause such shame, such utter disgrace to be brought upon the pair of them that he would henceforth be entirely justified in exerting the full force of his will. His son would make a bonfire of his dandy clothes, and enter the Foundry before the month was out; and his daughter, swathed in ignominy yet again, would be sent away from Manchester for good. No other option remained. Jemima had an aged spinster aunt in Newcastle, her late mother’s elder sister, who was famous for both the dull confines of her life and the bilious spirits which she inflicted on all who entered them. If the girl is so determined to be objectionable, he thought, let her kneel at the feet of an authority. She will soon learn something of the true boundaries that can be thrown around difficult women.
‘You must succeed, Mr Twelves. My partner returns to town tomorrow, and I do not want him troubled by these degenerates.’
The investigator tucked away his book. ‘I will take charge personally, Mr Norton. All will go smoothly.’
>
‘Very well.’ Norton stood, straightening his jacket. ‘It is high time we ended this foolishness once and for all.’
3
The clap-board admissions hut was painted an unpromising shade of light blue, and covered with tawdry posters advertising the attractions of the gardens beyond, from stunning fireworks displays to evenings of Highland dancing. A battered old crone manned the turnstile, grumbling wordlessly at those who passed her. The Tomahawk slapped his sixpence on the plate with a grin, and pushed through into the Belle Vue. It was already seven o’clock. Things had to be got underway.
Reading the Evening Star in his cubicle at the Model, Cracknell had gained the distinct sense that Kitson was deliberately trying to aggravate him–to force a confrontation. A disagreeable side-effect of our Exhibition, one recent passage had read, is the sudden rush to Manchester of so many faded celebrities–the spent, forgotten figures of yesteryear. They strut through the galleries at Old Trafford and stroll around the town like so many dull, dusty peacocks, stripped long ago of their best feathers. Their only goal is to be noticed by someone, anyone; it is their great hope, their ardent prayer, their single cherished aspiration. All people of sense and discernment, however, are utterly repelled by the reek of desperation that hangs about them. Their day has passed, their moment has fled–they are no longer of any special worth. Why are these poor wraiths the only ones to whom this perception is denied?
Cracknell had not known whether to laugh with derision or pity at this feeble abuse. Well, Thomas, he’d thought, casting down the paper with some violence, your wish for a further encounter will soon be granted.
Free of Cregg, Cracknell was really soaring. Once again, he was discovering that he worked best alone. Finding out about this assignation in the Belle Vue, for instance, had been simplicity itself. Among other things, the past month’s surveillance had yielded the tavern in which Norton’s coachman took his refreshment whilst his master was busy in the Exchange. Wandering in casually, the Tomahawk had engaged the fellow in conversation and bought him a jar or two of ale. He’d proved talkative indeed, as men who sit with horses all day often did; before long Cracknell had extracted a full programme of the Norton family’s social engagements for the next fortnight, including the excursion to the pleasure garden that same evening. It was the talk of the servants’ parlour, the coachman had imparted with a beery snigger. They were saying that Mrs James had finally realised she was mortal like everyone else, and had to hunt herself down a new husband before it was too late. Cracknell had laughed heartily, certain that he had learned the location of the widow Jemima’s next meeting with the street philosopher.
The plan should be kept fairly fluid at this stage, he decided. One of the wonderful things about being a lone operator was the flexibility; minute-by-minute adjustments could be made with ease. First of all, he would locate Kitson and the widow. Twelves and his band of black-suited fools were sure to be nearby. It was then just a matter of working out how best to direct events. A couple of things had to happen. Mrs James had to be told the full extent of her father’s crimes–the wicked foundations on which his recent fortune had been constructed. And Twelves had to catch the three of them together, Kitson, Mrs James and the Tomahawk, deep in a conspiratorial-seeming conversation. As a result, Norton would be completely convinced that his daughter was betraying him; and when he came to confront her over it, he would discover that she knew exactly what kind of a man he really was. This was not adequate punishment for Charles Norton, not by a long distance, but it was a damn good start.
It was with mixed feelings, however, that Cracknell walked into the Belle Vue. He had never been a particular admirer of pleasure gardens. They had a prevailing air of safety, of enclosure, from which his very soul recoiled. The Chateau des Fleurs in Paris and the Crermorne in Chelsea both bored him witless. His expectation was that the Manchester version would be an inferior, decidedly grimy copy of these–like every other thing in the damned town.
First sight of the place seemed to confirm this. Tree-lined promenades encircled expansive flowerbeds and gently sloping lawns, dotted with refreshment huts of all descriptions, iron-and-glass greenhouses and aviaries, crude rockeries, pale plasterwork statues and poorly trimmed topiary. At the centre of the gardens was a long oblong lake with a single-jet fountain at either end. Everywhere were gangs of locals, pitched out on the grass with lavish picnics, engaged in noisy games of quoits and small-cricket, gaping and poking at creatures in cages, and splashing around the grey lake in brightly painted rowing boats. The majority were comparatively genteel, in dress if not demeanour; members of Manchester’s commercial class, Cracknell concluded, the families of shop-owners, warehouse managers and the like. He had a keen distaste for such people. In his experience, they lacked the attractions of both the bloated, reckless rich and the pleasure-hungry poor, and tended to place prudish barriers of morality and piety in the path of real fun.
He started off into the gardens, swinging his cane, heading down through drifting fronds of willow towards the lake->>#QC::Hyphen#<<< side. Yellowed bird mess caked the stones beneath his shoes. The splashing of the fountains mingled with the piercing shrieks of children, racing wildly across the lawns. On the other side of the lake, a score of musicians were leaving a large oriental-style pavilion and filing across the open-air dancing boards before it. As Cracknell watched, they took their places on a raised orchestra stand, frosted with ornamental metalwork. Rich single notes and rapid flurried scales drifted across the Belle Vue as they prepared to play, slowly drawing an audience from the surrounding verdure.
‘Now where would they be?’ he wondered aloud, touching a flame to the end of a cigarette. ‘Where are you, Thomas, you faint-hearted goose?’
Cracknell knew that it was unlikely that Kitson and his lady of the furnaces would be lingering anywhere too public. Keeping his eyes peeled all the while, the Tomahawk thus embarked on a whistle-stop tour of the Belle Vue’s zoological exhibits. He studied shabby, disgruntled eagles crouched on boulder-piles with chains fastened around their ankles, like so many feathery convicts. He stopped briefly at a paddock containing some decidedly obstreperous llamas, chortling to himself as they spat at some overcurious children. He spent ten minutes in the monkey house, watching the dolorous beasts within swing listlessly from one side of their gloomy cage to the other. Kitson, however, was nowhere to be seen. Abandoning the animal enclosures, he took a stroll through a couple of the larger greenhouses. Forced to remove his top hat in the sweltering climate, he gazed blankly at a few tubs of leafy, sprouting things, surveyed the decidedly Kitson-less crowd, and made for the exit.
The sun, now starting to set, was largely obscured behind the miasma of smoke and dirt that rose continuously from the city beyond the Belle Vue’s walls. The shadows of the gardens had grown so long that they had begun to join, reaching out to one another across paths and lawns as if conspiring to end the day. A team of gas-men was hard at work across the lake, igniting the spherical glass lamps that were mounted on fluted iron pillars around the dancing boards. The orchestra stand was already lit up like a vast Chinese lantern, its reflection shimmering brightly on the water. Several dozen couples moved gently around the boards before it, to the parping strains of a popular tune Cracknell could not identify.
Seeing that evening was setting in, he steamed away towards the rear wall of the gardens, his cigarette puffing like a miniature funnel. Only one more corner of the grounds had to be explored before he could devote his attention to the pavilion and the dancing boards. It had yet to receive the attentions of the gas-men, and was growing a little murky, but there was still ample light by which to see and safely perambulate–and spot those who needed to be spotted. This last remaining area was dominated by a sizeable maze, fashioned from thick privet a good deal taller than Cracknell himself. A fingerpost informed him that at its centre lay the hermit’s cave. Sounds of celebration were drifting over from the lake, but all before him seemed still and silent. Flick
ing away his cigarette, he entered.
It took him but a couple of minutes to fathom the layout of the maze. ‘Hardly Daedalian,’ he murmured with sly satisfaction. ‘No match for the Tomahawk.’
Taking care to stay quiet, he was about to reach the cave at its heart when he heard voices close by, in the outer paths of the maze itself. His first thought was that it must be gas-men, come to light a lamp or two above the hedges. But then they drew closer, and he realised that they were nothing of the sort.
‘Honestly, Freddie,’ said one, ‘you can be such a flat sister at times. These boys are extremely keen to meet you. They’re from Bailey’s place. Porters from the look of them, but well dressed–and rather muscular, I must say. And thoroughly capable and inventive chaps, by all accounts.’
‘By their own account, you mean,’ said his companion ill-temperedly. ‘You will have to excuse me, Bill, if the thought of squiring some counter-jumpers you’ve found lurking in the blasted hermit’s cave at the blasted Belle Vue Gardens does not have me pissing my britches with glee. Our entire future, if you remember, is cast in deathly shadow.’
A devious grin spread across Cracknell’s face. It was none other than William Norton, accompanied by his close friend and partner in unnatural vice, Alfred Keane. During his time in the Cottonopolis, Cracknell had heard a good deal about this pair’s doings. They were more famous than they realised among Manchester’s lower orders. He withdrew to a dead end, and settled down to listen.
‘That may or may not be the case,’ Bill replied, ‘but if it is, if your very worst predictions should come to pass–God forbid–then should we not be doing this sort of thing as often as we can? Whilst we still have the liberty?’
‘Ugh, so relentlessly optimistic!’ Keane groaned. ‘God ain’t forbidding anything, William, don’t you see that yet?’
The Street Philosopher Page 33
