At the time which he had set inside his mind he woke up. He slipped out of bed and stood for a moment watching Grace. She was fast asleep. He went to the window and looked out once more. The fog had thickened. He had been pretty sure of the fog but if it had thinned out he would have gone back to bed; for tonight, at least.
In the fog-darkened room he moved like a cat with movements mentally rehearsed. He found the door, turned the knob with the slowness of infinite patience, slipped out and as carefully closed the door behind him.
He moved downstairs as stealthily as if he were a thief in a stranger’s house. On the lower landing he paused for long seconds before he dared move on. Down to the passage, into the kitchen and into the shop where he dressed swiftly, in old garments he had sorted from the mounds of his mother’s stock; a jacket, trousers, a pair of rope-soled shoes and a pair of woollen gloves.
The bolts of the yard door which he had oiled during the day slipped back without a sound. He left the back door unfastened and moved to the front door, which for the same reason opened as quietly. He peered out. Fog filled the street, whose length was marked only by the blurred haze of spaced gaslamps. He stepped out, closed the door with care and flitted along close to the housefronts, watchful for a lit window, keyed to hear any approaching footstep. Neither disturbed him.
He slipped into the stable entry and a minute later came out again. Silent on rope soles across the road, hurrying now along the opposite wall, alert, unseen, he turned into Brick Lane, continued to the next corner, turned into the thicker gloom of the next side street and soon stopped. He moved into the deeper darkness of a doorway. He was a little way from Jaggs Place, on the opposite pavement.
He stood absolutely still as does the animal or the soldier using darkness and he let his eyes become accustomed to the fog. Nothing stirred across the road. He slipped into the next doorway and watched again. Nothing. Then to the doorway directly opposite the arch. This time his watch was longer for the archway was itself a sheltering darkness. Only when he was sure that no shadow moved in it did he flit across the road and stop once more to peer round the angle of wall into the entry. He meant to take no chances. His enemies might be alert for a reprisal.
He edged slowly into the archway. The courtyard inside was still. Not a light showed in the unshuttered windows. The tenement walls above vanished like black cliffs into the fog. He was at the inner edge of the arch. There was no sentry. During the day, putting himself in his enemy’s shoes, he had thought that he would have bought a dog and chained it outside his door. There was nothing. Secure in his den, with all his tribe sleeping around him, it was beyond Keogh to imagine anything that one man alone could do to him. Well, he would soon learn.
Keogh’s hovel was in the angle to the right of the archway. A foot from Dido’s face as he slid along the wall was the window, beaded with moisture over its coat of grime. He stood in the utter stillness of a city halted and muffled by fog.
Dido fumbled in a pocket. He lifted the object that he had brought from the stables, a glass vinegar jar, gallon size. It was full of paraffin and its neck was stuffed with paraffin-soaked flannel, a tongue of which hung out to make a fuse.
Dido brought the hand out of his pocket and scratched a vesta against the wall. It sputtered. He put it to the flannel and there was a flare of smoky flame.
He brought back his arm level with his shoulder; then with all his force like a discus-thrower he swung it in a flat arc at the window, let go and as the crash of glass sounded, ran. He was into the archway, the night’s foggy silence shattered by a chaos of noises fast as the echo of a shot; tinkling of glass, behind it an odd roar like the roar of air up a chimney, and bursting into this a sudden dreadful commotion of human voices, child wails, woman’s screams, a man’s deep bellowing — all a wall’s breadth away from him in the moment that he flitted out of the arch.
He ran along the walls and the medley of noises increased in Jaggs Place as doors opened, new voices shouted; but more and more faintly as he ran in the fog.
His luck held. He was back in Rabbit Marsh and he padded rapidly across into the stable yard. Now, with the swift sureness of a man who had throughout the day rehearsed in his mind every moment of this night, who had sat at a back window memorising every yard, dustbin and hencoop, he climbed a wall and ran along the high rear wall like a cat, confident that the choking stench of the fog would loll his scent in the nostrils of the yard dogs. None barked. He dropped into his own back yard.
In by the unbolted back door. Into the kitchen. He was out of the clothes and out into the yard again with the clothes, the gloves and the sandshoes rolled into a bundle. The telltale garments, torn and marked with grime and dust and whitewash from a dozen walls, were stuffed into the boiler. They had been well splashed with paraffin beforehand. Into the house, back and front doors bolted, hands and face sluiced in the dirty-water bowl in the kitchen, and silently up to bed.
It was a couple of hundred yards in a straight line over the opposite block to Jaggs Place and as he moved with caution from stair to stair he thought he heard a faint babble of voices from that direction; but the fog played all sorts of tricks. However, there was no doubt about the noise he heard a little later; the clangour of fire-engines going along Brick Lane.
He began carefully to open the door of his bedroom; then he saw the glimmer of light within. It was too late to stop. He opened. Grace was sitting on the edge of the bed, a candle alight on the table next to her. She was rocking the baby in her arms. He started to make a hushing noise but in the same moment she whispered, “Sh! I’ve just got her off to sleep.”
He crept into the room and climbed into bed. She put the baby down in the cot and returned to bed, and whispered. “Have you been?”
She meant, to the toilet in the yard. Neither he nor she would use any indoor vessels to empty their bowels at night. He nodded, and said, “Sh!”
She whispered, “I can hear fire-engines.”
“Sh! Go to sleep.”
He woke up before his brother, went downstairs, wiped the oil from the bolts, stuffed the oily rag in the boiler and lit it. When the clothes within were well ablaze he rammed the charring fragments into yesterday’s ashes, pushed in more rags, cabinet-makers’ chips and shovelfuls of sawdust. The fire roared in the boiler: the start of a normal day.
He took a tray up to Grace with tea, bread and a boiled egg. While she ate he looked out of the window. It was a drear winter morning, wet dark pavements at the foot of the grimy walls, clouds low above them like a gathering of grey factory smoke, from which fell a fine sleet that would chill the ill-clad poor to the marrow of their bones.
He went into the front room to look out of the window. In spite of the weather there were clusters at all the doors busy in talk, and at the corner of Brick Lane the tip of a black crush overflowed, thick as the tail of a swarm of bees. People hurried towards the crowd, whose density at this point meant that Brick Lane must be packed for at least two blocks.
Grace got out of bed. Instead of going to the cot she walked to the chest of drawers and started to comb her hair at the mirror. She said, “I feel a lot better.”
“You’re just as well in bed this weather.”
“The doctor said I should start to take exercise.”
“You ’ad one bad turn.”
“That was the fright.” She could talk of it now casually, without looking round. Her spirits had returned because Dido appeared in good spirits, his old self again. She was always quick to forget fears. She peered at herself, arranging her hair. “I think I shall come downstairs for a bit.”
“What about your backaches?”
“I shall rest on the sofa. I can feed baby and put her down, and mother can bring her down to me later.”
“Don’t want baby catching cold.”
“She can’t stay in the bedroom for ever. Look at her red cheeks and her chubby little legs.” Grace laughed. She was already slipping into a long woollen dressing-gown. “There‘
s nothing ails her. You go down and see the kitchen’s warm.”
His mother was in the kitchen preparing Shonny’s breakfast. She was her old busy self. For her, too, yesterday’s fears seemed to have receded. Dido started to build up the fire with wood blocks and coal. Shonny came running in. He cried, “Dide, there’s all people in the street. I could see from the window —”
Dido said, “Get washed. Mother’s waiting with your breakfast.”
“Can’ I go out an’ see?”
“Get your breakfast. You can see after.”
Mrs Peach said, “I thought I heard fire-engines last night.
“I expect that’s it,” Dido said. “See after breakfast.”
Shonny was at the door when the hired boy came running in. Out of breath, he panted, “Mister — missus —”
“You’re fifteen minutes late,” Dido said. “Bed too warm?”
“There’s been a fire,” the boy gasped. “I been lookin’. Everyone’s up Brick Lane —”
Dido cut in, “Don’t pay you stand gawpin’ at fires. You get on the mangle.”
“There’s been a fire,” the boy cried. “Jaggs Place. They say all been burned. Burned to a cinder.”
“’Expec’ someone’s chimney caught fire,” Dido said. “Lot of ol’ women. If you drown a cat they say Southend Pier’s gone down with all hands. Get out to your work, lad. Won’t earn your livin’ gossipin’.”
The boy went out reluctantly; but before he had closed the door Shonny cried, “I’m goin’ to see,” and darted out.
Dido went upstairs. Grace was ready and he helped her down. She lay on the old sofa. Mrs Peach said, idly, “There’s been a fire. Down Brick Lane somewhere.”
As indifferently Grace said, “Oh?” She was sipping tea, warming her hands on the mug. Footsteps thundered in the hall. Shonny appeared in the doorway. His face was white. “Dide — Dide — It’s them. Keoghs. All of ’em. They’re all in ’ospital.”
Grace said vaguely, “Who are the Keoghs?”
Mrs Peach was staring at Dido, clutching her apron as if she might faint. Dido said, “Go on. Keoghs, eh?”
“But, Dide —” Shonny gasped. “You —”
Dido stepped forward and grasped his shoulder. “Shut up! I don’ wanna know about the Keoghs. None of my business.”
“But he was — he was —” Shonny was almost in tears.
Dido stood over the boy. He looked down at him with fierce eyes. “I don’ know what’s ’appened to the Keoghs. I don’t want to know. Nothing to do with me. Whatever ’appens to them it’s nothing to do with us here. Understand?”
“Don’t carry on at the boy,” Grace said mildly. “He was only telling you. Who are these Keoghs anyway?”
Shonny stood staring up into Dido’s eyes paralysed with fright. Dido said gently, “You understand, boy.”
Shonny said, “Yes.”
“All right. Get off with the barrow now. You know your calls?”
“Mother told me.” On mornings when there was a good deal of money to collect Shonny did the round with the barrow. He went out. But as he vanished into the passage the echoing bang of the street-door knocker sounded; once, then again.
Shonny’s voice could be heard, a piping of alarm, a deeper voice, the scuttle of Shonny’s footsteps and the trampling approach of heavier footsteps.
Inspector Merry came into the room and said, “Right, Peach. I want you.”
In the doorway stood the other plainclothes man with two uniformed policemen behind. A blanched and gaping Shonny slipped past them into the room. Dido faced Merry with a calm, enquiring gaze. “What’s this about?”
Merry turned. “Gaffney, you take the yard. Weldon, the shop.”
The two men went about their tasks. The remaining policeman moved into the doorway. Dido said, “What’s all this about? What you want me for?”
Merry said, “You’ll swing for this one.”
Mrs Peach clapped her hand to her mouth and moaned, “Oh, dear God!”
Grace cried, “Didy, what is it?” She stared at Merry in a dawning of recognition and reawakened fear. “What’s he doing here? What’s he want to come here again for?”
She threw a glance of petty anger at Merry. “Banging the door down. If you’ve frightened my baby —”
Merry lowered his face, his lips puckering in a savage travesty of amusement. He spoke low, as if to himself in wonderment. “Frightened your baby, eh? A baby was burned to a crisp at three o’clock this morning. Seven people fast asleep in a roomful of rotten old wood, rags, boxes, mattresses. All packed together for warmth with every rag they had on top of them.”
Dido said, “What is this?”
“They got warmth all right,” Merry said. “Room went up like a blowtorch. You’d think a bomb went off in there. Seven people.” He turned to look at Dido and said matter-of-factly, “Little girl of ten got out with a few burns. She’s in hospital. The woman’s dead. She was ailing. Burned in her bed, she was. Do you know that lad Cockeye? He did very well. He brought out the two little boys, five years old and three. Then he went back in for the baby. It was like a furnace by then. People tried to stop him but he darted away like a goldfish. Good lad was Cockeye in the end. Still, he might have saved himself the trouble. Baby was in an orange box packed with newspaper. Burned to a crisp already. And so was young Cockeye.”
Weldon came in from the shop. He said, “There’s some scorched floorboards.”
“Ah!” Merry pondered, eyeing Dido. “I think I see, said the blind man. You did a better job than they did. Three dead, four in hospital.”
Grace was looking at Dido without alarm or entreaty; simply with a long, vacant yet surmising stare. Dido said, “So you pick on me.”
Merry’s grin was bitter. “I have news, my friend. Keogh’s alive. There’s a constable by his bed. As soon as he comes round I only want one word from him. One word. Your name.”
Dido remained silent. Merry turned on Grace. With sudden savagery, “I suppose you’ll swear blind for him again.”
Her eyes opened a little wider but she said nothing.
Dido said, “She’s not well. Leave ’er alone.”
She said vaguely, “Swear blind?” She looked from one of them to the other. “Swear blind what?”
Dido said to her, “He wants to know —”
“Quiet!” It was a snarl, as Merry with the flat of his hand sent Dido reeling into the shop. “You don’t work that one twice. Gaffney —” He called to the other constable. “And you out there, take him down.” To Dido. “You won’t be laughing sixty minutes from now.”
“I’m not laughing,” Dido said quietly. He let the two policemen lead him to the door. He paused when he heard Grace’s voice.
She had raised herself on one arm. She looked at Merry with wide, frightened eyes. She spoke as if fearful of the consequence. “What did you want to know?”
Merry went back to the kitchen. He stood looking down at her. He saw a frightened, puzzled face. He said, “I’ll talk to you afterwards.”
She faltered, “What you said. All that. Was he supposed to —? Do you think he —?” She stopped as if it was too terrifying even to ask the question.
Merry said, “Three o’clock in the morning. You were asleep of course. Don’t know a thing.”
In the same faltering voice. “No. I was up. I was up for a half-hour feeding baby. She wouldn’t go off.”
They were all looking at her; the detective, the policemen, Dido, Shonny, Mrs Peach. She lay there propped on her arm staring at Mr Merry. He said, “Well?”
She stared at him, her breath quick and short as if she was about to cry. Then she said, “Well of course he was with me. Where else should he be?”
“All right,” Merry said to the policemen. “Get him down there.”
Dido was taken to the police station on foot. A small crowd followed all the way. He turned his head once after he left the house and beyond the swirling mob he glimpsed his mother standing on t
he doorstep.
Chapter Twenty-five
Merry had arrived on duty at the police-station at eight o’clock in the morning. As soon as he heard of the fire, the name of Jaggs Place set an alarm ringing in his mind and he hurried there. When he arrived the firemen were dismantling their apparatus and poking about the room, which was a black charred cave with a litter of burned remnants on the flooded floor. It was clear from the fire chief's answers to his questions that although no cause of the disaster had yet been discovered no-one had even thought of possible foul play.
Inspector Merry drifted among the onlookers and spoke quietly with a few of his acquaintances. Then he sent for a taxi-cab and went with a constable to the hospital. Keogh, in a swathe of bandages, was still unconscious. Merry left the constable at the bedside with instructions and returned to Brick Lane.
What had sent him so swiftly to the hospital was the information from one or two old cronies of Keogh that in the pub the previous evening Keogh had hinted that he had nearly done for Peach once and for all; and had boasted that next time he would bring it off. Merry could only cull hints, and these were not precise. One man reported Keogh’s saying that Dido would not sleep safe of a night from now on.
It was these hints which had sped Merry to arrest Dido for questioning. He thought he saw the whole thing now. He was sure that he had his man at last. It was only a matter of holding him until Keogh regained consciousness and talked.
After two days the police had extracted nothing from Dido and were still unable to bring a charge. The matter was out of Merry’s hands now. He was only a junior in what had become an important affair. The station bustled with the comings and goings and conferences of senior officers from the Division and from Scotland Yard. Merry found himself no more than their errand-boy, passing on orders and tramping the streets at their bidding.
King Dido Page 30
