by John Gardner
They shuffled in their chairs, Terremant and George Gittins, neither man happy with Moriarty using words picked straight from Holy Writ—after all, they had heard, vividly, from Lee Chow of the dreadful sacrilegious acts of which Professor Moriarty was capable. For Moriarty had told them, “Do as the Bible commands. Go ye into the highways and byways and compel them to come in. Luke, chapter fourteen: verse twenty-three.”
They were just starting to decide who should go to which public houses when the interruption came. Spear was patiently naming “flash” pubs like The Three Tons, The Waggon and Horses, The Gun, The Leaping Horse and Bar, The Four Feathers, The Bird in the Hand, and dozens more frequented by men and women of Moriarty’s family, where they planned to go, with other loyal men, “looking for trouble,” as Spear accurately put it, trawling for former members of the Moriarty family who had recently deserted to become collaborators with Idle Jack’s people. “Then we shall put the arm on them: compel them to come back, return to our master’s service, with all that it entails,” he added.
“Looking for trouble’s about right,” Terremant had just agreed, when there was a commotion outside on the landing, and Harry Judge opened the door, sticking his head into the room. “Mr. Ember and Lee Chow are coming up the stairs!” he gasped. “Couple of jokers with them.”
Hard on Judge’s heels Ember appeared, clutching hold of a struggling Streeter wiggling and waggling, trying to get himself loose, while Lee Chow pushed Jonah Whalen into the room, Whalen red-faced and angry, held in Lee’s harsh arm-locked grasp.
“So,” Spear greeted them. “You found friend Streeter, and he has a little apostle with him.”
“Says he should talk to you because he was your man. Said he should be brought to you first, before we arraign him before the Professor.” Ember looked hard at Bert Spear and shook his head as though trying to warn him of some arcane matter. “Though, if he’s to be believed, he has hard and brutal tidings.”
“What so?” Spear gave Streeter a venomous look.
Ember took a deep breath, his face somehow squashed partly in rage, partly in emotion. “He says Sal Hodges is dead,” he blurted. “Only just told us. Dead and stowed away down Brick Lane.”
“What?” Spear almost shrieked, his voice rising, rasping, near screaming. “Is this true, Streeter? You’re not trying to make booberkins of us? Sal Hodges, dead? How? When? Dear God, if you don’t tell us you’ll wish you were never born.”
“Last night, Mr. Spear,” Streeter said, now quite terrified at being before his old captain, “but I only heard in the small hours, this morning, from Jacobs, who used to be one of yours.”
“Which Jacobs? There were two. Brothers. William and Bertram.”
The Jacobs brothers had been prime men in the old days, lurkers and strong-arms of exceptional skill.
“The Jacobs boys who the Professor sprang from the Steele?” Spear asked, looking up from under his heavy lids. Indeed, Moriarty had got the brothers out of Coldbath Fields prison, known to everyone as “the Steele,” short for Bastille—an amazing coup, for Coldbath Fields jail was known to be exceptionally tight and secure.
Streeter nodded. “William Jacobs. He was with Idle Jack at his house. I happened to be there, downstairs with Rouster—”
“Happened to be there?” Spear roared. “What do you speak about, you little foozler? Happened to be there? You’re always there. You’re his shadow, Sidney, his bodyguard, and we know it. Which house?” he added quickly.
“The one in Bedford Square used to belong to his father, Sir Roderick.”
“So you were there, right? And where was Sal?”
“Sal was visiting him on what she said was a matter of some urgency.”
“And what matter would that be?”
“I don’t know for sure, Mr. Spear.”
Terremant stepped forward. “Let me sweat him, Bert. I’ll have it out of him.”
“I don’ know the ins and outs of it, honest,” Streeter whined, glancing about him as if looking for a way of escape. “Honest, I know nothing, but it was about one of the girls … and don’t arsk which one … I don’t bloody know…”
“I’ll warrant Idle Jack knows,” muttered Terremant.
Spear took an angry deep breath, shuddering with tamped-down violence. “You tell me the truth, Streeter, or by Christ I’ll be topped for you …” He lifted one closed fist and reached for the bullet-headed thug with the other hand. “I’ll wring it out of you …”
“I know she was there. Late on last night … Knew she’d come to see Sir Jack about something. He was with her in his room with William Jacobs, Bill. I did hear raised voices. They was shouting at each other, well, you know how Sal could be when she had the devil in her…I just got on with me dinner.”
“And…?” Spear asked, cold and uncompromising.
“And eventually Jacobs come down. Wanted someone to help him with a job. I had to stay there with Sir Jack, so he took Rouster—”
“Rouster? Rouster Bates?”
“Rouster Bates. Used to work with Mr. Ember.”
Ember spat. “That little tangle-monger! By God, I’ll get Lee Chow to do his worst on him! Get him to do his cheek job. On you an’ all, Sidney.” At which the unhappy Streeter began to wail like a child getting the whipping of its life.
“So what was it that Jacobs wanted doing?” Spear asked with chilling calmness.
“Disposal of a body,” Streeter sobbed, gasping for more air with which to wail.
“Shut that fucking row!” Terremant ordered in a voice so loud, commanding, and frightening that Streeter went silent in the space of one breath.
“Whose body?” Spear asked with crisp coolness.
“That’s just it.” Streeter was struggling to get control of himself. “I didn’t know till much later when Rouster come back. Early hours it was. He come in dead tardy, and I asks him straight away, ‘What was the job?’ And he tells me, ‘Disposing of the Hodges woman’s corpse.’ Well, I felt sick as a cat and asked him what had happened, and he tells me she was strangled. It’s got to be Sal Hodges. Don’t know another.”
“Who did the strangling, Sid? And think careful. Was it Idle Jack?”
“I think not, Mr. Spear. But I don’t know for sure. How could I? I can’t point the finger at no one. In honesty I could say I suspected it to be Jack Idell, but I could never prove it; and once I said that, how could I go back close to him, for you’re right. I own it. He relies on me now.”
“You’re not going back, Sidney.”
“What you mean, Mr. Spear?” he asked, truly frightened now the cat was out.
“Well, how could you go back, Sid? Your true place was always with the Professor, wasn’t it?”
“Of course. You see that, don’t you, Mr. Spear.” He was whining again, trying to curry favour, this bully boy with the shaved bullet-head reduced to a pleading padder caught in the act.
“You were always a good man, Sidney,” Spear soothed. “Always. I’ve got a job for you, and I know the Professor has something in mind for you as well.”
“Even though I worked for Sir Jack, Mr. Spear?”
“‘Course, Sid. The Professor likes people with spirit. But there’s one particular thing you can do for us first.”
“Say the word, Mr. Spear.”
“The Professor will probably want a word with Idle Jack, so when would he find him out and about on his own?”
“Never on his own, sir. But Friday nights he goes to the Alhambra: first house as a rule. Goes in for half seven and has his hansom waiting for him the minute he comes out around half nine.”
“Tomorrow’s Thursday, so it’ll be the day after. That’ll be Friday, the Alhambra, Leicester Square. Maybe Moriarty’ll have a word with him there. The Professor likes the halls, loves palaces of variety. Enjoys a bit of a sing-song, a conjuring turn, and a comic.”
“Ah. Hold on, Mr. Spear. Yes, Friday night. He will be there, but there’s only one performance Friday. They’re ha
ving a benefit night for the Daily Mail war fund. Only one show. Nine o’clock, but he’ll be there because all the big names are coming along later. Even Marie Lloyd’s going to be down from Peckham.* And he won’t miss Marie.”
The previous October, for the second time during the nineteenth century, war had broken out between Britain and the Afrikaner Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State: the South African Boer War. The war touched the feelings of the British public like none before, and people gave much at benefits run by individuals or newspapers, to send help to the beleaguered Tommies, treats of chocolate, Bovril, or fags. For some strange reason the Tommies seemed close to the man-in-the-street, who suddenly couldn’t get enough of the jingoistic songs and spectacles designed to urge “Tommy Atkins” on.
Spear nodded. “Good man. The nine o’clock, then. Friday. The Alhambra, Leicester Square.”
“And he’ll have his cab ordered for a quarter past midnight. With Marie and such you never know what time they’ll finish, but Jack’ll have his cab ordered for fifteen minutes past midnight, no matter. Like a clock, Jack is.”
“Carriage clock,” Ember grunted.
Spear nodded, then added quickly, “And where did they stow Sal Hodges’s body?”
Streeter did not answer promptly; for a second it was as though he suddenly saw through the soft soap with which Spear had been clouding the water. Then he gave a little nod and said, “Brick Lane. The common lodging house up the top. I think they call it The Beehive. Dropsy Carmichael runs it, with his missus, Dotty.”
“Dropsy and Dotty Carmichael, yes, I recall them. A convenient pair I remember. When is the body to be discovered?”
“Tonight, as I understand it, Mr. Spear.”
“A good old dodge,” Terremant wheezed.
“Ah,” from George Gittins, who looked straight at Streeter and gave him an enormous wink. “Yes, you pops the stiff into a kiphouse bed with the connivance of the keeper. Then at some point, maybe twenty-four hours later, when everyone else has woken and gone, you find the stiff’s died in the night and nobody knows its name. So nine times out of ten the stiff goes to a pauper’s grave and the lodging-house keeper is five pounds richer, and maybe a couple of other officials turn a blind eye.”
“And we wouldn’t want Sal done out of a proper Christian burial, would we, George?” Spear was sick at heart by the news of Sal’s death but he tried to be bright, nodding toward Gittins. “So, George, you’d better go along with Ember here and our Chinese friend. Sidney’d better go as well, add a bit of realism; tell Dropsy Carmichael that it’s Idle Jack’s instructions.”
“Of course, Mr. Spear. I’ll go willingly.” Glittering George Gittins gave a broad golden smile.
“Right, Mr. Spear.” Streeter seemed less convinced.
“And take care of that other matter for me.” Spear glanced in the direction of Streeter: just a slight movement of the eyes and the barest nod of the head.
“Of course. Of course I’ll deal with everything, Albert.”
“If we’ve a boy handy, Jim,” Spear turned to Terremant, “best send him round and arrange for old Cadaver to meet them there with his van in about an hour.”
Terremant said he’d see to it. Cadaver was their nickname for Michael Cadvenor, an undertaker much used by Moriarty when the need arose.
“Better leave him a bit more time,” Ember cautioned. “We were caught in a blockage in Piccadilly this afternoon. Really bad. I don’t know what they’ll do about the traffic eventually; there’s more cabs, carriages, and vans around these days. You can’t move on some streets for the crush. It’s bloody madness; soon, folk’ll not be able to get anywhere in London.”
“Yes, they’ll have to do something, and sooner, not later.” Spear rubbed his hands briskly. “Right,” he barked, “I’m off to break the news to the Professor.”
“Wouldn’t like to be in your shoes,” Gittins said, swallowing. “He’s going to raise a riot, the Professor.”
“He’ll be like a hare in a hen house,” Terremant growled.
“He’ll go doolally,” Ember muttered. “Doolally tap.”
Ember and Lee Chow closed in on each side of Streeter to walk him out of the room, followed by George Gittins.
“Who else going to be in this big night at Alhambra, then, Sidley?” Lee Chow asked.
“All the big names, they say.” Streeter swallowed hard. “Vesta Tilley, Little Titch, Dan Leno, George Robey.”
“Plime Minister of Mirth.” Lee Chow grinned. “Vely funny man.”
When they had all left, Terremant turned to the concerned-looking Whalen. “Well, young Jonah Whalen, so what’re we going to do with you, you pasty-faced leatherhead?”
IN LIFE SAL HODGES had been tall and slender, with sparkling bronzed hair that, when loosed, would waterfall down her back to almost just behind her knees—“like spun gold. Old gold,” Moriarty would tell her, which was odd, as the Professor was not often given to clichés. She had been a bubbly woman, quick with the joke, or the double entendre. Flicking at her long tresses, Sal would say that some men told her she sat on her greatest asset, and she would raise an eyebrow and pout so you were not certain if she was talking of her hair at all. Then she would give you this huge wink, just like Marie Lloyd when she was performing her cod French song, “Twiggy Voo,”* bring down the house, that wink when she sang:
Twiggy voo, my boys? Twiggy voo?
Well of course it stands to reason that you do;
All the force and meaning in it you can “tumble” in a minute,
Twiggy voo, my boys? Twiggy voo?
Ember, standing beside the raggedy bed, sucked at his teeth and shook his head. “She doesn’t look well at all,” he said to Lee Chow, standing next to him.
“‘Course she doesn’t look well,” big George Gittins sneered. “You wouldn’t look well if you’d had the life strangulated out of you.”
“Her hair all gone gley.” Lee Chow put out a hand and almost touched the now dirty white hair spread over the greasy pillow, fanned behind her head. “Not gold now. Gold gone.”
“Poor lady,” Sidney Streeter mumbled. “Poor lady.” Streeter did not like being in the presence of a dead body, particularly in this unpleasant room that, on a full night, would have to accommodate some thirty people, where at one time it could have done for a couple of servants. Just.
When the Flowerydean had been in full flood it harboured record numbers of thieves and prostitutes, and the main reason for this was the propagation of cheap lodging houses. They had flourished like the biblical green bay tree in this part of London—even after 1851, when an act of Parliament had tried to reduce the number—but now this was the last in the area where the Flowerydean rookery had once stood.
Dropsy Carmichael was just behind the little group as they awaited the arrival of the undertaker. Michael—Old Cadaver—Cadvenor was yet to get to them, no doubt delayed by yet another blockage on one of the crowded highways.
“You sure this is right? Jonnick?” asked Dropsy, speaking from the corner of his mouth, a wraith-thin individual, unshaven and looking quite unkempt and filthy from the food droppings on his coat to his somewhat matted hair. Dropsy was not a good advertisement for his lodging house.
“What you mean, is it right?” George Gittins mouthed at the lodging-house keeper. “What’s not to be right? You’ve got a dead person in one of your bug-ridden beds, that’s not right for a start …”
“Well, the people who came last night, Bill Jacobs and Rousty Bates, said she wasn’t to be discovered till tonight, when we made up the rooms. That was on the instructions of Jack Idell. Now here you come, not half past four in the afternoon, and tell me the orders is changed. She’s to be found now, and I already got a line of people waiting out there for beds tonight.”
“You’ll have an extra one to give them then, won’t you, Dropsy? An extra threepence in your pocket.”
“She really don’t look herself.” Ember was still chauntering on about Sal
’s body, and at that moment Lee Chow brought his hand down on the deceased’s forehead with a loud slap that made George Gittins wince. “You got rice and bugs ever’where,” Chow turned and addressed Dropsy. “You eve’ do anything ‘bout the bugs, Dlopsy? They o’ganizing own army here.” Lee Chow dramatically scratched under his arm. “The rice got legements o’ their own. The Bug and Rice B’igade.”
“You saying my house is not clean?” Dropsy asked belligerently.
“Hampstead donkeys everywhere,” Ember said. A Hampstead donkey was a body louse.
“Yes, we are saying that, and you’d better look to it, Mr. Carmichael, because our gaffer knows people who’d close you down quick as a fuck on a train, and don’t open your mouth to me”—Carmichael had already done so—“because I’m likely to close it for a few months, if not forever. Where’s that bloody undertaker? The stench in here’s enough to cut my phlegm.” Glittering George had a foam of spittle round his lips.
“Fart-e-bellies,” Lee Chow said plainly.
“Ar, and there’d be plenty of them here, an’ all.” Gittins had reached the point where he wanted to hit somebody—preferably Dropsy Carmichael—but there was a call from someone on the stairs. The undertaker had arrived.
“I hear that someone has departed from this house,” old Cadvenor said in the trembly, parsonical voice he used regularly for the bereaved.
“Up here, Michael,” called George Gittins, so loudly that Streeter flinched.
“She really doesn’t look herself,” Ember said for the umpteenth time.
“I’ll need the name and other details,” Cadvenor said, entering the room, a portly, fastidious-looking kind of man, the sort that would fuss over his appearance and be adamant that everything be done “by the book,” as they say.
“You won’t need those details, Mr. Cadvenor.” George Gittins turned so that what light there was caught his face. “You’ll be doing this on behalf of the Professor.”
“Oh!” The undertaker seemed to be pulled up short. “Oh, yes. Of course. You’re Mr. Gittins, are you not? Yes, I had heard the Professor was back in London.”
