Holmes spun back round. “The sewer?” he asked.
* * *
Thankfully, we were able to remain on solid ground and skirt along the edge of the mud, until we reached the sewer of which the boy – who had introduced himself as Jacob – spoke. He pointed at a semi-circular burrow in the earth, around which was arranged a border of solid bricks. All was darkness inside; entrance was by way of a single high, slime-coated step. A thin stream of pungent water trickled from the blackness onto the already sodden mud outside.
“There’s a sluice gate not far inside,” our eager informant confirmed. “It blocks off the water, ’cept when it’s open and then the tunnels get flooded. All sorts gets washed down then. Wood, metal, enough pennies to keep a soul in beef and gin every day. Even a sovereign now and again! Not that we gets a sniff at it, usually,” he concluded bitterly.
“Is that so?” asked Holmes, crunching his long frame down to examine the step through his magnifying glass.
The boy nodded fiercely. “Them toshers takes all the best stuff,” he complained. “They goes right inside, and won’t let nobody else in, see, so they gets their ’ands on any coin long before we gets a chance.”
“Except for a single gold ring, it seems.”
Jacob chuckled, an oddly adult sound from so slight a figure. “That’s right. Just lying on the mud it was.” He shook his head, marvelling at the luck of the boy fortunate enough to discover such a thing. “Dunno how Red Rob missed it, but he must’ve done. Stands to reason.”
Holmes’s eyes narrowed. “Red Rob?”
“Him as works this sewer. Red Rob Rae. ’E’s a tosher, though he was a mudlark once. Ain’t seen him for a day or two, but likely he’ll be in Matty Gray’s, off Rosemary Lane, if you’re lookin’ for ’im. That’s where they all goes.”
Holmes pulled out a final coin and tossed it across. “If you can give my friend and I good directions to this Matty Gray’s, I would be most obliged,” he said.
As Holmes and the boy discussed directions, I approached within a foot of the opening, already feeling the fumes from within catching at my throat. Close to, I was able to see a short way inside, though as this amounted to little more than a brick-lined tunnel and a stream of sickly brown water, it was hardly worth the effort or discomfort. I could, however, make out a rumbling sound emanating from within.
“What is that noise, Jacob?” I asked, peering futilely into the murky interior.
Other children had begun to take notice of our presence, and Jacob was obviously keen to be on his way with his reward intact. “That’s the Queen Rat, that is,” he said with a grin. “Size of an ’ouse, she is, and vicious as anything.” He chuckled once more. “Good luck if she bites you, though.”
With that he wrapped his jacket about him and turned away. We watched him slog across the brown slurry until he reached the far side, where he pulled himself out onto a patch of scrubby but solid dirt. Without a look backwards, he hurried away.
I expected we would do the same, but Holmes was eyeing a spot to the right of the entrance step. I could see wet stone and moss – and something fluttering in the breeze. With a grunt of effort, Holmes placed one foot on the step and, reaching to a spot some distance beyond the object of his interest, gripped the stone and levered himself up. He pulled tweezers and a square of paper from his jacket, and took possession of whatever he had seen stuck to the tunnel wall, then dropped back to the ground.
He carefully unwrapped the square of paper and showed me several long threads of green wool. “These strands confirm that a murder was committed here, that the murderer was approximately five feet eight, considerably more financially secure than his victim, in good health and given to carelessness.”
I held up a hand to forestall any further explanation, my desire to be gone from the mudflats temporarily driven from my mind by this puzzle. “The fact that he has snagged himself on the wall suggests his carelessness, and no doubt you recognise the wool as a rare and expensive blend, but how have you come to deduce the remainder?” I paused to consider. “The act of pulling yourself up onto the step caused you to give out a gasp, hence anyone else doing so must be in reasonably good health,” I ventured after a moment, “but I must admit defeat when it comes to the man’s height.”
“Very well done, Watson,” my friend congratulated me. “A fine effort, but you have failed at a fence which you are more than capable of clearing. You saw me reach far above the snagged thread to grip one of the outcroppings of stone jutting from the wall, in order to gain a degree of leverage. Our careless killer presumably did the same thing, reaching to a point somewhere close to the lost thread. Assuming a standard arm length, we can deduce a height approximately half a foot shorter than myself. A little shorter than you, in fact. And yes,” he concluded, “I do indeed recognise the wool as a particularly high-quality tweed. Whoever was in this tunnel was not someone who rakes the sewers to make his living.”
Looking around me, I wondered that any man would make his living in such a fashion. But there was nothing I could do for these poor children, I knew. Even if I were to give all the money in my wallet to one, there would be twenty, a hundred more behind him, whom I could not help. I turned up the collar of my overcoat against the biting wind and we headed back the way we had come, with Holmes examining the directions he had noted down in his notebook as we went.
Behind us, the remaining children continued their weary progress, as the drizzle strengthened to a steady downpour.
* * *
Evidently Jacob’s directions were good ones, for we had walked less than a quarter of a mile before Holmes stopped in front of a house in a street somewhat less unpleasant than those which surrounded it. A barely legible sign above the chipped wooden door read “Matty Gray”.
Without hesitation, he pulled it open and passed inside. I followed, wondering whether Holmes expected the killer of Red Rob Rae to be sitting waiting, for surely the coincidence of the scarlet birthmark on our corpse and the missing sewer man’s nickname meant the dead man at least had now been identified.
Such considerations were driven from my mind, however, by the sight which greeted me within the little terraced house.
Tentatively, I moved inside, a step behind Holmes, whose eyes had been caught by a curious row of tall wooden staves, barbed at the top with a substantial metal hook, held against the wall just inside the door by iron clips. Past his shoulder, I could see a sink and the remnants of a sideboard against one wall, which betrayed the room’s original purpose as a family home. Other than that, however, there was no sign that it had ever been anything other than the drinking den which was revealed to me as Holmes took another step forward and I was able to take in the entire room.
Four unmatched tables were crowded in the centre of a space no bigger than ten feet square. Beyond this a wooden bar took up the far end of the room; a short, thickset man stood behind it, his small eyes viewing us with suspicion. He, like the other men in the room, fell silent as we slowly crossed the floor. The air was as thick with menace as pipe smoke, and I found myself wishing I had my revolver to hand.
“What brings you gentlemen here?” the barman asked, his words a polite enquiry, but his tone imbuing them with an unmistakable insolence. “There’s nothing here for the likes of you.”
Holmes smiled and, unable to move any closer, spoke loudly over the heads of the seated men, each of whom continued silently to stare at us. “Good evening. We are looking for information on someone who we believe is known here. Our man is perhaps twenty years old, a little over five and a half feet tall, with dark hair. He has a red birthmark on his shoulder and answers to the name of Robert Rae.”
“What’s this?” barked one drinker, pushing his table forward so that it clattered against its neighbour. He moved into the space he had cleared and made his way towards us until he stood before Holmes. There was an unmistakable resemblance to the dead man.
The newcomer was about fifty, I would say, but showed n
o sign of the decrepitude which so often befalls working men of that age. Rather he was almost as tall as myself, strongly muscled and currently rather red in the face. His clothes were of decent fabric, but thick with grease, though he himself appeared personally quite clean. He stood erect in front of Holmes, his fists clenched together as he growled in Holmes’s face.
“Rob Rae is my late brother’s boy,” he said, glancing suspiciously at me. “But what’re you to Rob? I thought you were police when you come in, but now I see you closer, that in’t quite right. You’re no police. Least, not the sort they send when a shoreman’s bin caught up a sewer as they says he shouldn’t. So, what are you? And what’re you wanting with Rob?”
He fell silent, but I knew he was not finished. There was something about him, a keen intelligence in his eyes, perhaps, which I had not expected to find in such a place. Sure enough, he looked Holmes and me up and down, then began to answer his own question.
“You set out this morning with no thought to ending up here, that much I do know. Nobody who’s walked these streets would wear shoes with such a shine. The muck’s already ruined them for you, in’t it? The bottom of your trousers too. But you’re used to going places you shouldn’t. And confident too, else you wouldn’t walk into a place like this with that fine silver ring on your finger. So, you reckon you can look after yourself if trouble starts. And I’d wager you’re probably right. Nobody’s ever landed a fist on that face, leastways.
“But still… you’re not official, are you? Official tells you who it is straightaway, before it says anything else. Not you though – you asked your question first, not a word about who you are. You expected to be answered, mind. So not quite police, but not quite not….”
If Holmes was discomfited by this analysis, he gave no sign of it. “What of my friend?” he asked simply.
Rae considered, then, as though deciding to humour Holmes a little longer, suddenly smiled thinly and turned his attention to me. “Your friend in’t scared, either, I’ll say that for him. He has bin hurt sometime, though. He limped, just a bit, coming in. But no sign of any pain, so an old injury, and a bad one. Never healed quite right, did it? And a leg injury like that in’t common, either.” He coughed and spat on the floor. “He lets you do the talking, don’t he? A soldier once, I reckon. A man used to taking orders.”
I was impressed, and I fancied that Holmes too looked at the man with an unfamiliar respect. Whatever he had expected to find in this hovel, this was not it. He had not forgotten the reason for our visit, however.
“Very good, Mr. Rae,” he said, “you are perfectly correct. We are not policemen, though we do on occasion assist them. My name is Sherlock Holmes, and this is my colleague Dr. Watson. I am afraid that we come bearing bad news. A body which I believe to be that of your nephew was discovered in the water the day before yesterday. He had been dead for at least one further day.”
As a doctor, I have been obliged to break terrible news more often than I care to recall, and in my experience the death of someone known as a child – even once grown to adulthood – can break the spirit of the hardiest of men. Rae, though, was almost entirely unmoved. His brow furrowed as he took in the dreadful news, but otherwise he was as before.
The room continued in silence, until Rae abruptly called to the barman, “A drink for every man, Peter!”
Suddenly the room was filled with noise, as men pushed back tables and chairs and expressed their commiserations to the bereaved uncle whose name, it became clear, was Long Bill. He waved away every offered consolation and pulled the outermost table away from the others, then took three chairs across and invited us to sit, handing us each a drink as we did so.
“Red Rob Rae,” he said loudly, as soon as everyone had a drink in their hand, and the name was echoed by every man in the room including, a heartbeat out of step, Holmes and myself. Following Rae’s example, I drained my drink in a single draught, the rough gin catching the back of my throat and bringing tears to my eyes.
Only then did Long Bill speak. “I thank you for bringing the news,” he said carefully. “But there was little love lost between Rob and myself, though I’m the closest he had to living family. There was little love between Rob and any man in this room. I shouldn’t say so of the dead, perhaps, but he was a difficult man.”
“How so?” asked Holmes.
“My brother was killed when Rob was still a boy, and his mother was always a sickly woman, and not able to discipline a growing lad. Perhaps I should have done more, but I was unmarried and young myself, and there never seemed to be the time.” He would not meet our eye as he spoke, but instead traced shapes with his finger in some spilled beer on the table. “Whatever the cause, he went wrong somewhere along the way. No,” he corrected himself quickly. “Not wrong, exactly. Different.” He raised his head, and his voice, which had gradually softened to a near whisper, grew in strength once more. “Shoremen are a companionable lot. We need to be, if we’re to survive down the sewers. But Rob found such friends as he had away from his own people. Hours he spent down the mudflats, scavenging with the orphans and the immigrant children, until he was no better than a mudlark hisself.”
There was anger in his voice now, as though someone had set a match to the paper of his memories. His face twisted and his hand clenched in a fist.
“But he did not remain a mudlark?” Holmes asked quietly in the silence that followed. “In time, he took up the trade of his father?”
“He did, once I reminded him of his responsibilities. But he’d no interest in the rest of us, and he’d have no man down the sewer alongside him, no matter the danger. Money mattered more to my nephew than his own life, or so it often seemed.”
Rae’s voice trailed off, and his temper faded with it. He carefully laid his empty glass on the table, giving himself time to think before he spoke next.
“Was it money that got him killed?” he asked eventually. “Did someone do him in for a guinea or two?”
Holmes’s voice was quiet but sharp. “I did not mention a killing, Mr. Rae.”
Rae was unconcerned by the insinuation. “No, you did not. But I already said, din’t I, that even if you were police, you wouldn’t be the sort sent to tell us that a man had just bin caught by the tide.”
“Caught by the tide?” Holmes instantly sought clarification.
I thought at first that Rae would ignore Holmes, but instead, after a long pause, he responded.
“The tide’s the killer,” he said. “For a shoreman, the tide’s the real enemy. Sometimes it comes up on you sneaky, gradual, and if you don’t pay attention you end up stuck down some ruin of a tunnel where the air’s gone foul, and there in’t no way out. Othertimes, it runs up the sewer like a pack o’ rats and you haven’t the time to turn round before you’re smashed up against the bricks. Either way, you’re done for. The tide’ll take you, first chance it gets. That’s why you take a mate with you when you go down. So there’s always someone watching for the sluice gates going up or the tide coming through. Not Rob, though. He’d not have another man with him, for fear he’d have to split the take.”
“I imagine it is a dangerous life,” Holmes agreed. “The sewer we saw did not strike me as a safe place for any man. Even so, I have come to ask you to take my friend and myself down the tunnel which was your nephew’s particular domain. Will you do so?”
It was not the first time my friend had surprised me with a plan which he had not previously seen fit to mention. But after my recent brief visit to the mouth of the malodorous tunnel of which Holmes now so blithely spoke, I confess I was in no great hurry to return. I was not displeased, therefore, when Long Bill shook his head.
“There is something about you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, which reminds me of Red Rob,” he said, but his gaze was focused over Holmes’s shoulder, and his voice was so quiet that I had the uncomfortable sense that we were eavesdropping on private thoughts inadvertently spoken aloud.
“You are not a man to follow the common
herd, I think, and nor was he,” he announced more forcefully, his eyes once more catching and holding ours.
“No,” Holmes said simply, though whether he was answering a question or asking one, I could not have said.
More drinks had been passed to us as he spoke, and Rae took a slow sip. “How did Rob die then, Mr. Holmes? You in’t said that yet.”
Holmes appeared unconcerned that Rae had not answered his question but merely asked one of his own. “He was asphyxiated, we believe. Drowned in wet mud,” he clarified, “after an assault from behind.”
Rae sucked in his breath so quickly it made a whistling sound. “Is that so?” he said thoughtfully. He drummed his fingers on the table. “We’ve got a saying, Mr. Holmes. Shoremen don’t make old bones. If the tide don’t get you, the mud or the poisoned air will. Or the roof might fall, or the wrong wall crumble, or the rats might grow bold. We’re used to death and dying. But we don’t go looking for it.” He took another sip. “The sewers have bin there for hunners of years and they cross each other all over, but even so every main tunnel’s different. The water’s different, the bricks, even the muck. And the tunnel Rob worked, no other man’s bin down in five years. Not since he took it over. Nobody knows it or knows its ways, and that makes it dangerous. There’s places in every tunnel you’d be sunk to your ears, and not two foot away the floor’s as flat and safe as this one here. The trick is knowing one from the other. So, no, I’ll not guide you down Rob’s tunnel, nor will any man here.
“There is one man who might be willing, however, Mr. Holmes, though he in’t here at present. Nor ever likely to be without someone brings him. James Mackay has never bin welcome at Matty Gray’s, but he’s bin down that tunnel a time or two, I hear. And Rob was a friend to him once, so maybe he’ll feel an obligation.”
Any doubts I might have harboured about Rae’s standing in his community quickly vanished as he beckoned a brace of nearby shoremen over to our table.
Sherlock Holmes Page 3
