A Very Singular Guild

by Catherine Jinks

  Ned couldn’t help wondering if this were true – and if Alfred himself might be thinking the same thing. Certainly the bogler raised no fuss about Jem’s audition. Even when Mark Harewood suddenly appeared, with the news that Alfred was urgently needed at the General Post Office, Alfred didn’t change his mind about Jem. ‘I’ll have Ned to help me,’ the bogler said. ‘Besides, that post office is on a street off Newgate. So it’s probably safer if Jem don’t come.’

  Watching everyone exchange courtesies, Ned decided that Mr Harewood was much happier to see Miss Eames than she was to see him. The engineer even asked her to take a trip to the post office. ‘I couldn’t persuade Razzy to come, because he had a previous engagement,’ Mr Harewood revealed. ‘But if you were to replace him, Miss Eames, you could take notes and write the report yourself. As a representative of our research subcommittee.’

  Miss Eames, however, refused his invitation. Her first duty was to the child in her care, she said. Birdie’s future was of great importance, and Miss Eames wanted to ensure that the Theatre Royal’s management wouldn’t exploit or misuse the girl.

  ‘As if I’d let that happen,’ Birdie muttered scornfully, rolling her eyes. But she didn’t say anything else. Instead she waved at Alfred, smiled at Ned, and disappeared downstairs before Ned had a chance to wish her good luck.

  The whole room seemed dingier without her.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Mr Harewood, as Miss Eames hurried after Birdie, ‘it seems that I must do the note-taking this time.’ To Alfred he remarked, ‘I cannot endure the shame of being the only member of our committee not to have laid eyes on a bogle, Mr Bunce. Even old Gilfoyle has the better of me there. But I’m about to remedy the situation, and will be chaffed no longer for my failings.’

  ‘Mr Wardle ain’t never seen no bogle, neither,’ Ned interrupted. ‘He weren’t in the Newgate cellar yesterday.’

  ‘Was he not? In that case, I shall be able to chaff him.’ Mr Harewood was looking tidier than he had at their last meeting. He wore a soft felt hat, a pair of grey kid gloves, and a silk-lined frockcoat. Nevertheless, there was something wild about his appearance. His hair was too long, perhaps, or his manner too energetic. Was that why Miss Eames had been slightly cool with him?

  ‘I walked here from Trafalgar Square,’ Mr Harewood went on, ‘but we must take a cab to the post office. If you’re ready, Mr Bunce?’

  ‘Aye.’ Alfred reached for his sack.

  ‘I shall want a full report on your job at the theatre last night. Was there a bogle? Yes? I thought as much.’ Mr Harewood held the door open for Alfred and Ned, just as if they were gentlemen.

  Ned could only assume that it was done in a fit of absent-mindedness. ‘I’ve been studying our maps, and have established that Mr Wardle was correct: a sewer does pass beneath the Theatre Royal. It commences at the junction of Drury Lane and Long Acre, runs along the Strand, then enters the Thames via Norfolk Street.’

  Ned thought about this as he made his way downstairs. It was only after a hansom cab had been hailed, and they had all piled into it, that he finally ventured to ask Mr Harewood if there was a gate on the Norfolk Street sewer outfall.

  ‘I never bin that far west – not along the riverbank,’ Ned admitted. ‘It’s the eastern mudflats I know.’

  ‘Alas, I fear I’m no better acquainted with the outfalls than you are,’ said Mr Harewood, ‘though I’m sure Mr Wardle can help us. Why?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Ned took a deep breath. He always felt slightly tongue-tied in the presence of well-educated people, and couldn’t help stammering as he answered Mr Harewood’s question. ‘I – I were puzzling as to how we might flush them bogles into the river, and then I thought to meself: what if they already live there?’ When the engineer didn’t scoff at this notion, Ned found the courage to suggest, ‘Mebbe we should check the tide tables. If there’s kids being taken when the tide is high—’

  ‘Then we might have ourselves a crop of river monsters coming up the sewers!’ Mr Harewood finished. He beamed at Ned, who was wedged into the seat beside him. ‘My word, but you’re a sharp lad! I like the way you think – indeed I do!’

  Ned flushed with pleasure.

  ‘Tide tables are easy enough to procure,’ the engineer went on. ‘As for river monsters, Gilfoyle is the one to ask about them. He’s made a study of the subject.’ Mr Harewood suddenly shifted his gaze to Alfred, who was sitting on Ned’s right. ‘I should tell you, by the by, that Gilfoyle intends to consult his friend at the Apothecaries’ Hall today concerning any toxins that might have been applied to your spear, Mr Bunce. If the news is good, he’ll inform us directly.’

  ‘I bin thinking about that,’ was Alfred’s unexpected response. ‘And I’ve a better idea.’

  Ned stared at him in surprise. Even Mr Harewood was taken aback. ‘You do?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye.’ Alfred’s voice quavered as their cab bounced over a rut in the road. ‘Me old master, Daniel Piggin, were a Derbyshire man. His sister still lives near Derby. She’s a “cunning woman”, trained in herbs and old lore.’ He glanced inquiringly at Mr Harewood, who gave an encouraging nod.

  ‘Folk medicine,’ the engineer said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘If anyone knows owt about that spear, it’s Mother May,’ Alfred continued. ‘She and her brother was very close, at one time. Afore he moved to London.’

  ‘I see.’ Mr Harewood was still nodding. ‘Then perhaps you should write to her, Mr Bunce?’

  A rare smile cracked across Alfred’s dour face. ‘I never learned to write, Mr Harewood,’ he pointed out, ‘and I doubt Mother May ever learned to read. But I thought as how I might take a train to the Peak District, if you’ve no objection.’

  ‘None at all, Mr Bunce!’ Mr Harewood sounded very keen. ‘I think it an excellent notion! And I shall ask Mr Wardle to reimburse you for any expenses you might incur, since the committee has a fund to cover such costs. When were you planning to go?’

  Alfred shrugged. ‘Just as soon as I ain’t needed here,’ he said.

  ‘Which may be a good while.’ The engineer turned his head to peer out the window. ‘Personally, I’d encourage you to take your trip before our next meeting, since Mother May’s contribution could be vital.’ All at once he stiffened. ‘Aha!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘We’ve arrived! Good. I told Mr Clegg we’d be here by eleven.’

  ‘Who is Mr Clegg, sir?’ Ned asked, as the cab lurched to a standstill.

  ‘He is Chief Clerk to the Secretary of the Postmaster-General.’

  Ned didn’t find this answer very illuminating. But he climbed out of the cab without saying another word, and was soon standing in the street with Alfred, while Mr Harewood paid their driver.

  Ned had never seen the General Post Office up close before. Its immensity awed him, for the building occupied an entire city block. Each column on its facade was at least six feet wide. Each window was nearly as big as Alfred’s whole garret room. The entrance was thronged with people, who poured in and out with more parcels and letters and sacks than Ned had ever seen in his life.

  There was construction going on across the street, and the noise was deafening.

  ‘Come along!’ Mr Harewood said loudly, as their cabman cracked his whip. ‘We’ll ask for Mr Clegg in the main office.’ He began to climb the front steps, with Ned and Alfred close behind him. Though pushing through the crowds wasn’t easy, they at last found themselves in a grand public hall full of people. This hall was perhaps fifty feet high, and at least five times as long, but it was so crammed with bodies that Ned had to grab Alfred’s sleeve for fear of losing him.

  ‘Stay with me!’ Mr Harewood bellowed, over the roar of several hundred voices. Then, instead of joining a line, he went straight to the nearest counter and interrupted a transaction involving a parcel bound for Walthamstow.

  ‘Pardon me,’ he said to the bemused mail clerk, ‘but I’ve an appointment with Mr Clegg. Could you direct me to the Secretary’s Office, please?’


  ‘You’ll have to wait your turn, sir,’ the clerk replied, causing Mr Harewood to throw out his chest, square his broad shoulders and scowl impatiently.

  ‘Indeed I shall not!’ the engineer snapped. ‘I’m here at the request of Mr John Tilly, Secretary to the Postmaster-General! He has engaged my friend, Mr Alfred Bunce, on an urgent matter! Now kindly tell me where I may find Mr Clegg.’

  By the merest chance, Ned was glancing around the room when Mr Harewood uttered Alfred’s name. So when a nearby newsboy started at the sound of the word ‘Bunce’, and fixed his penetrating gaze on Alfred, Ned observed that look. For an instant the newsboy stood frozen. Then he bolted towards the front door, before Ned could do more than open his mouth.

  ‘Thank you!’ Mr Harewood spat. He was still addressing the mail clerk, who must have grudgingly passed him a scrap of information, because he suddenly whirled around and said to Alfred, ‘This way! Follow me!’

  Ned was given no choice. If he hadn’t set off immediately, he would have been left behind. But he kept looking back, trying not to lose sight of the newsboy, until a heavy door suddenly cut off his view of the hall.

  After that, there was nothing for him to do but go forward, into the mysterious depths of the post office.

  9

  THE LOWEST LEVEL

  ‘Mr Harewood. How do you do, sir?’

  ‘Mr Clegg.’

  The two men bowed, but didn’t shake hands. Mr Clegg was a plump, elegant, grey-haired gentleman wearing a discreet moustache, a gold-rimmed monocle, and a bland expression. His boots shone like polished jet.

  ‘I take it this is Mr Bunce?’ he asked, peering at Alfred through his monocle.

  ‘Mr Alfred Bunce. The bogler,’ Mr Harewood confirmed.

  Mr Clegg nodded. ‘Good morning, Mr Bunce,’ he said smoothly. Then he gestured at the policeman beside him. ‘May I introduce Constable Juddick? We have an Internal Police Office here, and Emmet Juddick is one of our four constables. I have asked him to help you, since I am unfortunately pressed for time.’

  Constable Juddick was large and burly, with a broken nose, a freckled face, and bushy red side-whiskers. His voice sounded like gravel crunching underfoot.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Bunce. Mr Harewood, sir,’ he growled. When his gaze fell on Ned, he didn’t say a word. But his brisk nod was comforting.

  Unlike Mr Clegg, the policeman actually seemed aware of Ned’s existence.

  ‘Constable Juddick is far better informed than I am on the subject of disappearing boys,’ Mr Clegg went on. ‘Is that not so, Constable?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I am merely a humble conduit, transmitting his concerns.’ The Chief Clerk smirked a little, as if he’d just told a joke. Then he excused himself. ‘Do tell me how you fared,’ he politely requested, bowing again to Mr Harewood. ‘I shall be most interested in your findings. And I’ll be expecting a full report from you, Constable.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good day, gentlemen. Please forgive me. I really must go . . .’

  Within seconds he’d vanished, leaving his visitors marooned with Constable Juddick in a small, wood-panelled office. Mr Harewood didn’t look terribly impressed, Ned thought. And Alfred was becoming impatient.

  ‘Where was them kids last seen?’ he asked the policeman.

  ‘Downstairs.’ Constable Juddick spoke flatly, in clipped sentences. ‘Three of ’em went missing. All telegraph boys. The new Telegraph Office ain’t open yet, so the boys still congregate in our basement. They keep their overcoats down there.’

  ‘In that case, you’d best show us the basement,’ said Alfred, hoisting his sack up onto his shoulder. With a nod, Constable Juddick turned on his heel. Then he marched into the corridor outside, setting a course for the nearest staircase.

  As they made their way down to the lowest level, past a room full of stamping machines, another full of weighing equipment, and a third lined with pigeonholes, Alfred continued to ask questions. How old were the missing boys? Were they small for their age? Had anyone seen or heard anything peculiar before they vanished? To all these inquiries Constable Juddick gave only one answer, in a grinding monotone.

  ‘Corporal Catty will know, for he’s the head delivery boy.’

  Ned was surprised to hear that telegraph boys had military ranks. Despite their blue serge uniforms, they’d never impressed him as being very disciplined. He was wondering if they saluted each other, like real soldiers, when he found himself in a room full of pipes and valves and pressure gauges – and he immediately lost interest in the telegraph boys.

  ‘This ain’t no hydraulic lift!’ he exclaimed, before he could stop himself. Ahead of him, Mr Harewood paused and said, ‘No. It’s warm-air apparatus. For heating the gasometer.’ Seeing Ned’s awestruck expression, he pointed to one of the smaller devices. ‘See that? It regulates the supply of gas to all the burners in this building – including that one over there.’

  ‘I seen dry meters, on occasion, but nothing like this.’ Ned spoke absent-mindedly as he gazed at something that looked like a cross between a tank and a steam engine. He knew that he shouldn’t linger, because Alfred and the policeman were already out of sight. But he couldn’t tear himself away. ‘It’s a wonder, ain’t it?’

  Mr Harewood sniffed. ‘It does its job, I daresay, but not with any degree of elegance. A perfect piece of engineering combines several functions in an aesthetically pleasing manner.’ He took Ned’s arm and began to lecture him as they slowly made their way out of the room. ‘Take Christopher Wren, for instance. Although his Monument was designed to commemorate the Great Fire of London, it is also a giant zenith telescope. By opening a trapdoor in the gilded orb at the top of the tower, you can watch the night sky from a laboratory in the basement.’

  Ned had been listening attentively. ‘You mean a thing’s much better if it does twice the work?’ he asked. ‘Like the street-lamps on Holborn Viaduct? They got vents in ’em as lets out sewer gas . . .’

  ‘Exactly! That is exactly what I mean!’ Mr Harewood’s grip on Ned’s arm tightened. ‘Only consider, for example, how ingenious it would be to combine the regulation of the gas supply, in this building, with the regulation of its pneumatic dispatches! For they both rely on a careful manipulation of pressure—’

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but what is a pneumatic dispatch?’

  Mr Harewood stopped abruptly. ‘Oh, my dear fellow, a pneumatic dispatch is the very latest engineering marvel!’ He began to describe, in great detail, how mail was now being carried all the way from Euston Station to the General Post Office inside capsules that travelled along an underground tube. Powered by compressed air in one direction, and atmospheric pressure in the other, each capsule acted as a kind of piston, moved by a steam-powered reversible fan that created a vacuum.

  Mr Harewood’s vivid description filled Ned with excitement.

  ‘Can we see it?’ he demanded. ‘Is it down here, Mr Harewood?’

  ‘I believe there is a terminus,’ the engineer replied, then glanced around and winced. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, dropping Ned’s arm. ‘We seem to have lost the others.’

  It was true. They had taken a wrong turn, and were now standing in a long, empty hallway lined with doors and utility pipes. Two of the doors were sheathed in iron. Another was studded with locks.

  ‘Hello?’ Ned’s raised voice echoed off the vaulted ceiling.

  ‘Mr Bunce?’ ‘Oi!’ came a sharp rejoinder. ‘What’re you doing down ’ere?’

  When Ned and Mr Harewood spun around, they found themselves face to face with two telegraph boys: one sandy-haired and bandy-legged, the other tall, swarthy and chinless. Ned judged them to be between thirteen and sixteen years old.

  ‘We’re looking for Corporal Catty,’ Mr Harewood informed them.

  ‘Catty? He’s in the kitchen.’ The taller boy jerked his thumb at an adjoining corridor. ‘Did you come with them others? Old Judd and that Go-Devil man?’

  ‘We did,’ said
Mr Harewood.

  ‘Then I wish you the best o’ luck.’ The smaller boy, who appeared to be chewing tobacco, spat on the floor. ‘I’m right sick o’ pairing off. Why, we can’t go to the privy alone, now! And must report every other step we take . . .’

  He was still grumbling as he and his friend squeezed past Mr Harewood, on their way to something they called the ‘dispatch room’. ‘Tell Catty we found you,’ the taller boy added, ‘else he’ll send out a search party, the silly old hen.’

  ‘Tell him Joe’s too big for a bogle’s stomach, and I’m too stringy,’ his friend joked, before vanishing around a corner.

  Watching them go, Mr Harewood murmured, ‘Safety in numbers, eh? I’m not surprised they’re pairing off, in the circumstances.’

  ‘Uh – Mr Harewood, sir?’ Ned wasn’t much interested in the telegraph boys. ‘I bin thinking . . .’

  ‘Again?’ The engineer flashed Ned an amused look, before starting down the kitchen passage. ‘Perhaps we’d better find the others before we distract ourselves with more scientific speculation. We don’t want to get lost a second time, do we?’

  ‘No, sir, but – well, there’s summat I need to know.’ Scampering to catch up, Ned breathlessly inquired, ‘If we can’t flush them bogles out o’ the sewers with water, can we do it with air?’

  ‘Like the pneumatic tube, you mean?’ Without waiting for an answer, Mr Harewood continued, ‘I doubt it. London’s sewer system is so riddled with leaks that the amount of pressure required would be beyond our capacity to generate.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s a cunning thought, though.’ Mr Harewood stopped in front of a closed door at the end of the passage, his hand on the knob and his eyes on Ned’s face. ‘You’re a clever lad. Can you read, by any chance?’