A Very Unusual Pursuit (4 page)
‘There’s some would rather die than dirty their shoes,’ Alfred quietly observed, after they’d left this furious pedestrian far behind. It was only the second or third remark that Alfred had made since leaving Bethnal Green. Mary hadn’t been very talkative, either; she seemed nervous to be sharing a coach with Alfred, and would speak only when spoken to. Luckily, Birdie wasn’t afraid to ask questions. And by the time they reached Bloomsbury Square, Mary had admitted that she was, indeed, related to Ellen Meggs, who had told her all about the bogle in Mrs Plumeridge’s chimney.
‘Ellen had her evening free, last night. She came all the way from Westbourne Park to tell me, and though she stayed in the kitchen, Miss Eames must have heard every word from upstairs.’ Suddenly Mary reached up to tap at the hatch in the roof. ‘Turn here!’ she told the cabman, before fixing her attention on Birdie once more. ‘Ellen said
you
was there. In that room, with the bogle.’
‘Of course,’ Birdie replied.
Mary shuddered, drawing her shawl tightly around her. But she didn’t say anything else until they reached their destination, which was a neat and narrow brick house in a line of almost identical houses, tucked away near St George’s church. While Alfred and Birdie alighted, Mary paid the fare. Then she headed for the area steps, stopping only when she heard her name spoken.
‘Ah! I thought so.’ The lady who had appeared at the front door of the house was dressed in several shades of mustard, with a modest bustle, no flounces, and the plainest of hairstyles. Her pale face was shaped like a cat’s, wide at the cheekbones but tapering off to a pointed chin. She had clear hazel eyes under straight, black brows, and there were lines around her eyes.
‘You must be Mr Bunce,’ she said briskly, extending a hand to Alfred, who was still standing in the street. Then she caught sight of Birdie. ‘And who is this?’ she asked.
‘He wouldn’t come without her, miss,’ Mary complained. And since Alfred seemed to be momentarily speechless, Birdie answered for him.
‘I’m the ’prentice,’ she announced.
‘I see.’ After a moment’s startled silence, the lady murmured, ‘And what is your name, dear?’
‘Birdie.’
‘So nice to meet you, Birdie.
My
name is Edith Eames, and if you’d both step inside, I’ll give you a full account of why I sent for you. Rest assured, I shan’t keep you long.’ To her housemaid, who was already bound for the kitchen, Miss Eames said, ‘Could you bring us some tea, Mary? In the drawing room, I think.’
‘In the drawing room?’ Mary looked askance at Alfred and Birdie. ‘But—’ ‘In the
drawing room
, Mary,’ Miss Eames repeated, her voice stern. ‘And bring a little cake, if you please.’
Birdie grinned. Tea was a rare luxury. Though she didn’t like it much, she would enjoy boasting about it to her friends. But it was the prospect of cake that made her heart pound.
Birdie loved cake.
She scurried after Miss Eames and soon found herself in a hall that wasn’t quite as grand as Mrs Plumeridge’s, though still very handsome. The drawing room that opened off it was so pretty that Birdie didn’t know where to look first. It had flowered wallpaper and tasselled curtains and embroidered firescreens. There were stuffed birds and gilt-framed pictures, books and cushions, a workbox, a piano, a red marble clock and a white marble statue. The grate was full of fresh roses, and the carpet was so beautiful that Birdie was afraid to tread on it.
‘Please sit down,’ Miss Eames said to Alfred, who was peering nervously at all the chairs on offer. They were spindly things, covered in damask.
‘Mebbe I oughter stand,’ he replied, ‘else I dirty ’em.’
But Miss Eames wouldn’t let him stand. Instead she draped the sturdiest chair in crocheted antimacassars, which she gathered from some of the other chairs in the room. Once he’d settled himself into a nest of white frills, with his sack on his knee and his hat on his sack, Miss Eames put Birdie on a footstool, arranged herself on an elegant fainting-couch, and began to speak.
‘Mr Bunce, I have made a long and scientific study of English folklore. My main interest is in the faerie realm – those inhabitants of the spirit world that some call Elementals. It was always my understanding that belief in elfin peoples had been driven from our cities, and that it existed only among country dwellers steeped in the ancient traditions of our race. But when my housemaid told me about
your
occupation, I realised that I was wrong!’
Alfred stared at her blankly. So she cleared her throat and tried again.
‘I’m told that you were recently hired to banish a child-eating beast from a house in Paddington. Is that correct?’ she asked.
Alfred nodded mutely. It was Birdie who said, ‘A chimney-bogle.’
‘A chimney-bogle!’ Miss Eames repeated, rolling the words around on her tongue with obvious delight. ‘How extraordinary. And did you actually
see
this creature?’
‘Of course!’ Birdie exclaimed. ‘You can’t kill a bogle if you can’t see it!’
‘Ah! So you killed it, did you?’ Before Birdie could answer, Miss Eames reached over to retrieve a book and pencil from a little table nearby. ‘What did it look like, this “chimney-bogle”?’
‘Oh, it were big. And black.’ As Miss Eames began to scribble in her book, Birdie added, ‘We ain’t never caught more’n a glimpse of any bogle, on account of how fast they move, and how quick they die.’
Then Alfred found his voice, at long last. ‘Have you a job for us, miss?’ he said gruffly.
Miss Eames shook her head. ‘I have not, as it happens, though I wish I had. So far I’ve not been fortunate enough to encounter a spirit of the elements in any guise, whether gnome or troll, sylph or brownie. But I am
very eager
to meet people who have.’ Leaning forward, her pencil poised, Miss Eames inquired, ‘Were you born in London, Mr Bunce?’
‘No.’ Alfred shifted uneasily. ‘I were brought here from the country as a little lad, nobbut five years old.’
‘I see.’ Miss Eames made a note in her book. ‘And did your father practise the same trade?’
‘No. I were ’prenticed. Like Birdie.’
‘Afore me he had a boy called Jack, as went to sea, being too growed up for bogling work,’ Birdie revealed. She liked talking to Miss Eames, who listened with such flattering attention. But before Birdie could relate the story of her own first meeting with Alfred, on the banks of the Limehouse canal, Mary suddenly appeared with a tea-tray – and everyone was briefly distracted by tea, plum cake and slices of bread and butter.
Birdie tried to restrain herself. She took only one piece of cake and two slices of bread, though she did put four heaped spoonfuls of sugar in her tea. The tea was served in beautiful cups with pictures painted on them. The sugar came in a crystal bowl.
Alfred ate nothing, and barely touched his tea. He looked deeply uncomfortable.
‘Begging yer pardon, miss,’ he said, as soon as Miss Eames had refreshed herself with a sip of tea and a bite of cake, ‘but what’s it to you where I come from, or what me father did?’
Miss Eames carefully set down her teacup. ‘As I said, Mr Bunce, I am a folklorist, with a
profound
interest in your profession.’ Smiling a little nervously, she clasped her hands together, cleared her throat, and confessed, ‘What I should like to do is write a paper on the topic. I’m sure it would be eagerly read, and very widely discussed. But before attempting such a thing, I should like to accompany you on your next encounter with a nature spirit. Of course I would be there as a witness, and will undertake not to interfere in any way.’
Birdie’s jaw dropped, exposing a mouthful of chewed bread. Alfred frowned and said cautiously, ‘You want to come on a job, miss?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘With me and Birdie?’
‘Wherever chance may take you.’ As a final encouragement, Miss Eames fixed Alfred with a bright, penetrating look, and in a businesslike manner declared, ‘Naturally I would pay you for the privilege. Let us say . . . half a crown? And a shilling in advance for your trouble.’
Alfred was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Three shillings.’
‘Done.’ Miss Eames sprang up and went over to a highly polished writing desk. ‘Perhaps you can use the extra sixpence to catch an omnibus home.’
‘Do you work for a newspaper, miss?’ Birdie inquired. But her mouth was so full that the question emerged as a thick mumble.
She had to swallow before repeating herself.
Miss Eames paused in the act of unlocking a desk drawer. ‘I fear not,’ she answered. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because you talked o’ writing in a paper.’
Miss Eames smiled. She had removed a purse from the drawer, and was counting coins into her hand. ‘I may have the privilege of publishing my piece in some learned journal, or reading it before the Victoria Institute,’ she said. ‘But none of the
popular
periodicals would be interested in my work.’
‘I would be.’ Birdie had caught the wistful note in Miss Eames’s voice, and was keen to encourage her. ‘If you write about me and Mr Bunce, mebbe you can read it to us. Once you finish, like.’
‘Could you not read it yourself, dear?’ When Birdie shook her head, Miss Eames regarded her with narrowed eyes. ‘That’s a shame. You look like a clever girl to me. Have you no paupers’ schools in your neighbourhood?’
‘Yes, but . . .’ Birdie trailed off and glanced at Alfred, who was scowling. ‘The master there can be heavy-handed,’ she finally confessed. ‘He cut me across the face, once. Besides, I ain’t no scholar. I’m a bogler’s girl.’
Miss Eames didn’t look convinced. But she abandoned the subject, crossing the room to give Alfred his shilling in advance. ‘Tell me where we should meet again, Mr Bunce,’ she requested. ‘Or have you not settled the time and place of your next job of work?’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Alfred. ‘I know where
that
’ll be.’ Pocketing his money, he went on to explain that two young mudlarks, or ‘grubbers’, had gone missing while foraging for coal and wood on the riverbank. Though one of the boys had been an excellent swimmer, police had ruled that both of them must have drowned.
‘It’s a dangerous stretch o’ river, with tides and boats and bogs,’ Alfred related. ‘But there’s a tosher I know, name o’ Crabbe, and
he
says—’
‘I’m sorry, a what?’ Miss Eames had returned to the couch, where she had retrieved her book and pencil. ‘What is a “tosher”, pray?’
‘Don’t you know, miss?’ Birdie couldn’t hide her amazement. ‘A tosher is someone as trawls the sewers for a living, in search o’ things to sell.’
‘And this tosher were down near the outfall at Shadwell,’ Alfred continued, ‘when he saw a grindylow take a boy, or so he says. By which he means—’
‘A Yorkshire water monster!’ Miss Eames exclaimed. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of grindylows. They are a species of nixie or water sprite, associated with bogs, lakes and meres. They’re said to eat children, like Peg Powler or Jenny Greenteeth.’
Alfred frowned. ‘I know nothing o’ Peg Powler, nor Jenny Greenteeth,’ he rumbled. ‘As for this grindylow, it’s just a bogle by another name.’
‘Oh, but there are many
kinds
of bogle, Mr Bunce.’ Again Miss Eames jumped up, this time heading for a book-cupboard from which she extracted a large, heavy volume bound in calfskin. ‘If you consult the antiquarian texts, you’ll see that there are any number of water monsters scattered throughout England. The question we must ask ourselves is: are they all local versions of the same beast, or are they different monsters entirely, with different habits and characteristics?’
She thrust the book under Alfred’s nose, so sharply that he recoiled. When Birdie rushed to join him, she saw that the pages had fallen open at a picture of a creature – half hag, half troll – with long, tangled hair and a ragged cloak on its back.
‘That don’t look like no bogle
I
ever saw,’ Birdie commented, cocking her head to one side.
‘It is perhaps drawn from a verbal description,’ Miss Eames said delicately, ‘and not from life.’
‘A bogle’s a bogle.’ Alfred’s tone was gruff. ‘I don’t care what it looks like, long as I can kill it.’
‘Them sewer pipes is thick with bogles,’ Birdie added. ‘Ain’t that right, Mr Bunce?’ To Miss Eames she remarked, ‘It’s very likely me own ma died on account of a bogle. She were a tosher, see, but left me in a drain one day, and no one’s seen her since.’
‘But how dreadful!’ Miss Eames looked quite shocked. She set down her book, her brow creased in dismay. ‘Is that why you became a bogler’s apprentice? To revenge yourself on your mother’s killer?’
‘Oh, no!’ Birdie assured her cheerfully. ‘I were a tosher too until Mr Bunce heard me sing. You need a sweet voice in this trade.’
‘You do?’
‘A voice like honey,’ Birdie confirmed. Then she burst into song. ‘
I’d hang the highway robber – hang boys, hang! I’d hang the burglar jobber – hang boys, hang!
’
All at once the drawing-room door opened again. But this time, instead of admitting Mary the housemaid, it yielded to the pressure of an elderly lady in a white lace cap. This lady was very small and thin, with grey hair arranged in ringlets over her ears. She wore a black gown and fingerless gloves. Her eyes were large and blue, her teeth stained and broken. She carried a walking stick.
‘Why, and who is this little nightingale?’ she demanded. ‘Edith, you never mentioned that we were expecting visitors.’
‘I’m sorry, did we disturb you? I thought you’d gone to Mr Fotherington’s house for tea. Isn’t that what you usually do on a Friday?’ Without waiting for a reply, Miss Eames went on to explain, ‘This is Mr Alfred Bunce and his apprentice.’
‘Come about the broken chairs?’ her aunt queried.
‘For my research.’ Miss Eames cleared her throat and said, ‘Mr Bunce has been describing his life as a bogler.’
‘Really? How interesting.’ The old lady offered up a vague smile as she eyed Alfred’s dusty boots. Then she addressed his apprentice. ‘You have such a pretty voice, dear. What were you singing?’
‘“Hanging Johnny”,’ Birdie supplied.
‘Ah.’
‘This is my aunt, Mrs Heppinstall,’ Miss Eames informed Alfred, who had risen from his seat. ‘She likes to hear about my studies.’
