Perhaps Tomorrow

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘Oh, yeah, like you I suppose.’

  Several emotions that Freddie couldn’t quite interpret flashed across Archer’s face.

  ‘You want to take some water with it, Freddie, because the drink’s addled your brain,’ he replied in a flat tone.

  Freddie jabbed his finger at him. ‘Don’t think I ain’t seen the way you look at Mattie, Archer. And I know what your little game is.’

  Archer laughed. ‘Game! You’re the one playing games. Trying to sweet-talk her so you can get your feet under her table.’

  ‘And when you’re totting up her books I bet you’ll just let it slip about me and Molly.’

  ‘Mrs Maguire’s sharp enough to see for herself the sort of man you are, Ellis.’ He stepped forward and loomed over Freddie. ‘Now, unless there’s something else . . .’

  They stood eyeball to eyeball for a moment, then Freddie looked away. ‘I’ve said my piece.’ He poked his finger close to Archer’s face. ‘But I’m warning you – don’t get any ideas about Mattie Maguire.’ He stomped away before Archer could answer. Anger and humiliation twisted together in Freddie’s chest, and as he returned to his task he distracted himself by telling Archer a few home truths in his head. By the time he’d finished Freddie vowed that the first thing he would do when he took over Maguire’s was to give Jack Archer his marching orders.

  Seeing the Whitechapel to Holborn omnibus about to leave from outside the London Hospital, Nathaniel dashed after it and jumped on the back plate. He swung up the narrow stairs at the back and squeezed onto a seat on the left side.

  The omnibus passed along Cornhill and then swerved into the main shopping area of Cheapside. City gentlemen in their shiny top hats and sharply tailored jackets dodged between the multitude of vendors – from Armenian coffee merchants to stalls heaped with spices imported from Zanzibar. When the bus reached St Paul’s, Nathaniel pushed his way off and headed towards its dome. It was the tallest building in London but Nathaniel was hard pressed to see its grandeur, hedged in as it was on all sides by tenements and warehouses.

  A pungent aroma of raw sewage filled Nathaniel’s nostrils. Pete was right – he’d told him the quickest way to find Fleet Street was to get off at St Paul’s and follow your nose as the Fleet ditch would guide you to Ludgate. Keeping a tight grip on his leather wallet to save it from the light-fingered urchins who lurked in side alleys, Nathaniel fought his way through the crowds and down the hill. The last rays of the autumn sun were just fading when he spotted the sign for Norfolk Street high on the wall. He turned left, and then left again into Norfolk Court, to find the Working Man’s Defender office and print works. He paused and stepped into the shadows.

  In the impoverished and overcrowded streets of Wapping and Shadwell he was as safe as a man pursued by the law could be. Even the police only ventured off the main thoroughfares in threes and fours and never at night. Few people could read, so there was no need to furnish a reference to take a room or find work, and the whole economy was cash in hand and no questions asked.

  Even when weaving number one cart amongst the tightly packed streets and offloading coal, he was known simply as the coalman or Jack. He had become comfortable in such surroundings. He might even find a way to convince Mattie to marry him. But if he walked into the newspaper offices his slim chance of future happiness could be lost forever.

  Perhaps he should just turn away and hold on to what he had, but how would he ever look at himself in the mirror again if he did? He owed it to Marjorie and his girls.

  Tucking up his collar, Nathaniel crossed the road. He walked around the back of a cart and looked through the dirty window in the half-glazed door. Inside, a couple of young men were bundling newspapers into stacks ready for distribution. The Defender was a weekly periodical and tomorrow, Wednesday, was publication day. He pushed open the door and was blasted with the sharp metallic smell of ink mingled with machine oil. One of the printers, muscular and with ink-stained fingers, turned from the machine whipping paper under the press and looked him over.

  ‘Mr Smyth-Hilton?’ Nathaniel asked

  ‘Upstairs,’ the printer replied, nodding towards a set of wooden stairs at the back of the print shop.

  Nathaniel started up the stairs, which were so creaky he wondered if they could bear his weight. At the top he headed for the open door at the end of the landing. Inside, sitting at a desk was a man with his head down, and busily scratching his quill across a sheet of paper. Nathaniel knocked on the door frame. The man held up the palm of a surprisingly delicate hand, continued to write for a few moments then threw the pen down and let out a sigh. ‘One cannot cut into the prose when it is in full flow, sir,’ he said, looking up.

  The young man had bright blue eyes and a rounded, almost feminine face. The fine moustache on his top lip set his age at twenty-five or thereabouts. His unfashionably long blond wavy hair was swept back from a high brow. The mulberry-coloured velvet jacket sitting on his narrow shoulders was high quality but worn almost through at the elbows. His shirt, too, showed signs of wear, with splodges of ink on the frilly cuffs and on the faded red cravat, which was tied loosely around his winged collar.

  ‘Mr Smyth-Hilton?’

  The young man stood up. ‘At your service. What can I do for you?’

  Nathaniel pulled out the sheet he’d peeled off the wall at 56 Thrawl Street. ‘I found this plastered on a dosshouse wall.’

  Smyth-Hilton’s eyes flickered over it and his lips twitched. ‘Dosshouse, you say? My, my, we must be going up in the world. It’s usually found torn into squares and hanging from a nail in the privy.’

  ‘It was the subject matter that caught my attention.’

  ‘It is the right, nay the duty, of every Englishman to speak his mind and I warn you, you may smash my presses into scrap iron and beat my poor frail body to a pulp but I will never, never be silenced.’ He placed a finely boned hand on his chest. ‘It is my quest to expose the corruption and self-interest that keeps the working men of this country chained in poverty and ignorance. I shall not be intimidated by you, or anyone else Amos Stebbins sends to silence me.’

  ‘If that’s true then I was right to bring you these.’ Nathaniel pulled the file from beneath his jacket and held it out.

  The journalist took the file and flipped it open. He sat down and scanned the top sheet.

  ‘Please, sit,’ Smyth-Hilton said, waving his hand towards the chair in the corner, then returned to reading the file.

  Nathaniel crossed the room to the window. Across the square a police officer checked the warehouse doors of the buildings opposite, shining his bulls-eye lamp up and down. He turned and shone the lamp to the upper windows. Nathaniel stood back from the window as a shaft of light cut briefly across the room.

  Smyth-Hilton looked up from scanning the documents. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It’s clear these,’ he held the papers aloft, ‘were obtained by, shall we say, unconventional means.’

  ‘Everything written there is genuine,’ Nathaniel said, jabbing his finger onto the top sheet. ‘These are copies of deeds of properties recently bought. Not one or two but dozens of them, all acquired at rock-bottom prices and then quietly transferred into Stebbins’ name. There are the balance sheets of the accounts he has submitted to his Grey Friars warehouse shareholders, along with the much less buoyant ones kept under lock and key at his solicitors.’ Nathaniel moved the first sheet away and pointed to the line of figures on the one below. ‘There are also odd outgoings to unspecified recipients which might yield some interesting answers.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Smyth-Hilton said, ‘but I would need to see the original documents for myself before I could print a word.’

  ‘I understand but I thought, given your study of Mr Stebbins’s activities, that you might be interested in them nonetheless.’

  ‘What is it to you, Mr whoever you are?’

  ‘That’s my business at present.
’

  ‘Do I detect a country accent? Essex, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Smyth-Hilton nodded slowly. ‘I believe Mr Stebbins hails from that part of the world.’

  ‘Essex is a big county.’

  ‘During my investigations I have already unearthed a number of very interesting facts. One stands out in particular: prior to his moving to our fair city he was involved in some very nasty business whereby a great deal of money was stolen from his employer.’

  Nathaniel’s expression didn’t change.

  He would have been surprised if Smyth-Hilton hadn’t found out where Amos came from and the scandal of the Romford money, but with a police officer nosing around in the yard below, the tiny office suddenly seemed to shrink even smaller.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes. But his junior clerk, a local man named Nathaniel Tate, accused Amos Stebbins himself of taking the money. However, as a proportion of the money was found hidden in a box at the bottom of the clerk’s garden, it seemed that Tate was the guilty party, not Stebbins.’

  ‘Damning evidence indeed,’ Nathaniel replied, remembering the look of horror on Marjorie’s face when the small steel casket was unearthed beneath the children’s vegetable patch. ‘I don’t suppose anyone considered the possibility that Stebbins might have put it there.’

  ‘I read the court transcript. The possibility was mentioned at the trial but no one put much store by it.’

  ‘Why should a jury believe the word of a lowly clerk with a stash of money in his garden against that of a respectable gentleman of the town?’ Nathaniel asked with just a trace of bitterness in his voice. The memory of Amos’s contorted expressions of sorrow about the hurt and betrayal he had suffered at the hands of one whom he had ‘nurtured like a son’, had completely hoodwinked the twelve jury men at Chelmsford Assizes.

  ‘Why, indeed. I also know, through a few friends on H division, that Stebbins was warned a while ago that a certain Nathaniel Tate had escaped from Her Majesty’s penal colony and had been seen in Amos’s home town of Romford asking questions as to his whereabouts.’

  The blood now pounded in Nathaniel’s ears but he didn’t move. ‘I have no notion of what you’re talking about. I came to you because I thought you were interested in uncovering the truth about Amos Stebbins but . . .’ he leaned forward, shut the file and went to take it back, ‘if you’re not . . .’

  Smyth-Hilton hand shot out and anchored the wallet to the desk. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Nathaniel held the other man’s gaze for a few moments, then the reporter looked down at the collection of papers. ‘I’ll put a few feelers out.’ He opened the file and started to flick through it again.

  Nathaniel straightened up and strolled to the door.

  ‘Where can I contact you, Mr . . .?’ Smyth-Hilton asked.

  Nathaniel glanced over his shoulder. ‘You can’t. I’ll drop by again sometime.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Amos Stebbins stood in the clockmaker’s doorway opposite the Old Rose public house and pretended to admire the various timepieces. Inside, the old watchmaker, with a horn spy-glass wedged in his eye, regarded him curiously through the dimpled glass of the window.

  Amos bent down as if he were inspecting the gold hunter watch in the centre of the display and surreptitiously looked across the road.

  It must be nigh on eleven by now, so where on earth was she?

  The shopkeeper had just taken off his buff apron as a prelude to coming out to offer assistance when Amos spotted Mattie heading off to buy her Friday supper. He waited until she was out of sight, then stepped out of his hiding place and marched briskly across the road. As he strode past the open gates of Maguire’s he glanced in.

  Good. Number one and two carts were back from their morning rounds. He continued on to the end of the road then turned and strolled back. Swinging his cane and with a jolly expression on his face Amos sauntered into the yard.

  Number three cart was standing in the middle of the space with the bay horse between the shafts while Pete heaved sacks of coal on board. Number one cart was parked against the far wall which meant Flossy must be in her stable. Perfect.

  ‘Good morning. Is Mrs Maguire in?’ Amos asked, looking around the yard.

  Pete put his hands in the small of his back and straightened.

  ‘You’ve just missed her, she’s gone to Shadwell fish market,’ he replied, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  Amos snapped his fingers in the air. ‘Oh, I forgot it’s Friday. Do you think she’ll be long?’

  ‘Half an hour I expect,’ Pete replied, swinging a sack over his shoulder and throwing it on the wagon.

  Amos drew his watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Mmm. I’m a bit pushed for time but perhaps I’ll wait for a while. Number one cart not going out then?’ he said nodding at the empty cart.

  ‘No. Flossy threw a shoe this morning. Jack’s just gone around to the farrier’s to see if he can walk her around later.’

  Amos laughed. ‘So the old girl’s got the afternoon off.’

  Pete hoisted another sack onto number three wagon and grinned. ‘I wish I had. Do you want to wait in the house? I’m sure Queenie would be happy to make you a cuppa.’

  Amos waved the suggestion away. ‘No, I wouldn’t trouble her. You carry on. I’ll just stretch my legs around the yard.’

  Pete touched his brow and turned back to his task. Amos glanced over his shoulder to ensure Pete wasn’t watching him and then he slipped into the stable.

  Flossy, the yard’s sixteen-hand piebald, who had pulled number one cart for as long as Amos could remember, stood munching her lunch in the end stall. She looked around at him, her large eyes showing even darker in contrast to her white face in the subdued light. Judging by her feather grey muzzle she was probably close to twenty years old, a good age for a draft horse. Amos walked across the straw covered floor towards her.

  ‘There’s a good girl,’ he crooned, as he squeezed himself between her and the wooden partition.

  Flossy shook her head. Amos fumbled in his pocket and pulled out an apple wrapped in greaseproof paper. A faint whiff of something drifted up and Amos rubbed his thumb over the sealing wax at the base. Thankfully, it was still intact. Tucker had warned him at least a dozen times that if the wax melted or fell out he was to discard the apple immediately. He placed it in the palm of his hand.

  ‘Look what I’ve got for you,’ he said, holding it near to the horse’s mouth.

  Flossy nuzzled it, snorted and turned her head away. Amos tried again, forcing the fruit between her loose lips. Flossy shook her head and backed away, her hooves clopping on the stone floor.

  Amos grabbed the leather strap fastened over her nose. The whites of the old horse’s eyes showed as she tried to pull herself free. Amos pulled her head down. ‘Come on you piece of dogs’ dinner, take it,’ he snarled.

  Flossy whinnied and flicked her head away again. Amos let go of the bridle and closed his hand over her velvety nose, pinching her wide nostril shut. The horse flattened her ears and opened her mouth. Amos forced the apple between her teeth, over her tongue. As Flossy’s ground-down molars closed over his arm, Amos whipped his hand away. The horse coughed a couple of time then buried her nose in the bucket of water beside her. Amos watched for a couple of moment then, satisfied that the old horse had swallowed the apple, he walked smartly out of the stable with a glow of satisfaction at a job well done.

  Pete had finished loading and was on the top of his wagon kicking the sacks firmly into place before setting out on the afternoon round.

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ Amos called across without breaking his stride. ‘Will you tell Mrs Maguire I called and I’ll pop back tomorrow?’

  Pete nodded. Amos’s shoulders relaxed. According to the slaughter man the poison would start to take effect as soon as it reached the horse’s stomach but he would be halfway down Cable Street by then. Tucking his cane under his arm and suppressing a s
mile Amos turned out of the gate and collided with Mattie.

  ‘Mr Stebbins,’ she said, straightening her bonnet. ‘Are you waiting for me?’

  ‘Mrs Maguire . . . Yes, I am. Or at least I was. I’ve an urgent appointment elsewhere now. I’ll call tomorrow.’ He tipped his hat to her. ‘Good day.’

  ‘Good day, Mr Stebbins,’ she replied, as he walked past her.

  Amos picked up his pace and marched to the end of the street. As he turned the corner he stopped, took a deep breath and let his shoulders relax. He repositioned his top hat and tucked his cane more securely under his arm, then strolled on. As he made his way westward towards lunch at the Hoop and Grapes, a discreet smile settled across his lips. Let’s see how long Maguire’s can keep afloat with only three horses.

  When Nathaniel spotted Stebbins turn out of Maguire’s yard and march down the road towards him, he only just managed to step back around the corner. He pulled his cap down and leant against the wall, keeping his eyes on Stebbins’s portly figure until he was certain he wasn’t coming back and then walked around the corner to the yard. Mattie was talking to Pete beside number three wagon with her basket over her arm. She turned and smiled at him as he strolled over.

  ‘You’re back early,’ he said, enjoying the sight of her.

  She laughed. ‘I could say the same to you. Can the farrier fit Flossy in later?’

  Nathaniel nodded. ‘I’ll walk her around last thing.’

  ‘Good,’ Mattie replied. ‘I can’t afford to have her idle another—’

  An ear-piercing scream from the stable, followed by wild banging and crashing echoed across the yard. Mattie dropped her basket and dashed towards the open doors with Nathaniel and Pete hot on her heels. They skidded to a halt just inside and stared in horror at Flossy.

  Somehow she had wrenched herself free from where Nathaniel had tied her a few hours before and now stood in the middle of the stable with her eyes rolling and sweat glistening on her flanks. Her front legs were splayed apart as she drew in painfully rasping breaths. Her ears were flat and she trembled convulsively.