Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (37 page)

He was installed behind his counter. He looked at us twice – the first time to dismiss our poverty, the second to recognize us.

‘Seems to me you’ve got a lot to be fearful about, Mr Dugdale,’ said Blake, ‘with Woundy dead. If I were you, I’d be wondering if I was next.’

‘Thought I told you to keep clear of Holywell Street!’ Dugdale said coldly. ‘You think I won’t follow through? I tell you, you leave us alone or I will follow through!’

‘So it was you that sent that blundering oaf to threaten us? Did the coppers tell you to get rid of me? You think they’ll help you if he comes back for you?’

‘Merrick!’ Dugdale called out, throwing the word into the back of the shop.

‘You think your bruiser will save you? Woundy’s bruisers couldn’t help him. And now one of them’s dead.’

‘Get out of my shop! Merrick!’

A stout, slovenly creature lumbered out of the back. I stepped before him to block him, grinning.

Blake leant across the counter and caught Dugdale’s arm. ‘I reckon if anyone can save you it’ll be me, Dugdale. If I catch him.’

Dugdale squinted over at his nobbler, who had stepped away from me. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know where to find Dick Carlile.’

He laughed, incredulous. ‘Richard Carlile? You think he can help you? Well, you can try. He must be all but out of print, and if he’s not he’s not far off and living on his sons’ charity. They’ve a print shop by Temple Bar. He might talk to you. If he’s minded to. If he can still talk, that is.’

We turned up Newcastle Street, then left into Wych Street. ‘Where now?’ I said.

‘I need to see Dearlove’s body.’

‘Yes, of course. But what about Daniel Wedderburn?’

‘What about him?

‘Surely we must allow – though it pains me to say it – for the possibility …’ I hesitated.

‘The possibility of what?’ he said.

‘Why,’ I said, lowering my voice so that only he might hear, ‘that he killed his father and the others.’

Blake limped under an awning to catch his breath. He held his ribs. At that moment my eyes alighted upon a shop sign.

‘Herbert Taylor, marine stores and fine grocer’s.’

‘An unusual combination,’ I said. The place looked cheap and unprepossessing but relatively prosperous for the neighbourhood. ‘That must be the Taylor who had Pen Horner gaoled and whom Mayhew says is a receiver of stolen goods.’

My palm was already around the door handle. Blake said hurriedly, ‘Do not identify yourself. Take a brisk look. Pull down your cap so you will not be recognized. Ask him—’

But I was already away, hunching my shoulders and pulling my cap down in readiness as I entered.

The interior was cheaply panelled but recently painted, and was modestly furnished with a long brown counter on which there were scales with weights and one glass bell jar covering a bowl of boiled sweets. On the shelves behind the counter there were some boxes of tea, sugar, coffee and rice: the extent of the fine groceries. The rest of the shop was crammed with all manner of dusty, well-used junk and jumble: a couple of dining-tables with leaves missing; odd chairs; several pairs of curling-irons; a collection of assorted wine glasses; a number of muddy, unframed portraits; various tobacco boxes and watches in ugly, silver-plated cases; a moth-eaten fur mantle which bore the legend ‘worn by the second murderer in Kemble’s Macbeth’. Opposite the counter were piles of old chapbooks and ‘blood and thunders’ and a stack of well-thumbed periodicals. I nosed among these, aware that I must not appear the most salubrious of customers. The man behind the counter cleared his throat expectantly, and I realized that if called upon to speak I
would certainly not sound like a London working man and wondered how I might manage to engage him in an exchange.

‘May I help you?’ the man asked doubtfully. He was in late middle age, of medium height, and free of hair both around and on top of his head save for a few carefully teased tufts which he had endeavoured to smooth over his bare pate. A bulge of flesh wobbled under his chin, and a paunchy stomach indicated a keen and presumably regularly appeased appetite.

I shook my head and muttered something unintelligible. Blake was standing in the middle of the street, looking impatient. I would have to risk a word or two.

‘You Mr Taylor?’ I said, my words sounding appallingly strangled and wrong, even to my own ears.

He frowned slightly. ‘Might be. What d’you want?’

The only disguise I could think of was a thick West Country brogue.

‘Errts a marssiff gray’ mixturr of thangs yoo ’arve ’ere.’

He looked deeply puzzled. I might as well have been speaking Hindoostanee. I tried again.

‘It is. A massive great mixture of things. You have here,’ I said slowly, retreating from deepest Devon.

‘Oh! Yes,’ he said, his brow clearing with relief. ‘Not too many places you can get dry goods and such a wonder as the fur mantle over there. And we got all sorts at the back. Wych Street’s best, if you know what I mean, which I’d be more than happy to help you with.’

‘Oh no,’ I ventured. ‘I’ll just take two ounces of reg’lur tea. And a little shugur.’

‘Very well,’ he said ill-temperedly, weighing out the requisite amounts. I paid my tuppence and left, with little to show for my efforts, and gave my modest report to Blake.

‘It’ll do,’ he said. ‘Little more we can discover today.’

‘Funny thing,’ I said. ‘He has piles of copies of
Master Humphrey’s Clock
in there, the one which has
The Old Curiosity Shop
in it. Matty was reading them. It made me recall the part where the boy, Kit Nubbles, has five pounds planted upon him and is sentenced to transportation. It made me think of Pen.’

‘Say that again,’ said Blake.

I repeated it. He rubbed his ear.

‘Gracious, Blake, you do not think …?’

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘A lesson. No reading is ever wasted. Give me the bag.’

I handed the old hessian bag to him. He retreated under an awning and with an air of utter confidence, together with great speed, despatched the eyepatch and cap into its depths while simultaneously retrieving a clerk’s coat and slipping his arms into it. From its pocket he brought out a pair of round spectacles. In his new garb he had the air of a meek man who found the world a worrying place.

In he went, and I, loitering, followed a moment later, making a show of admiring a large stuffed carp. Taylor gave me a suspicious look but turned his attention to Blake.

‘May I help you, sir? Anything ail you?’

‘I must confess I am taking shelter in your shop. I have come into town to meet my nephew who wishes to take me to the theatre later. I am not altogether comfortable in these streets. I have recently had a most unpleasant experience with some footpads. I was lucky I escaped with just these bruises.’ He gestured at his face. ‘Forgive me for saying so, but I have always found this area somewhat rough, with pickpockets and such, and the locals quite brusque in their manners.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘But for all that, I am not averse to spending a few pennies should I find something I like.’

‘I understand your concern, sir,’ the man said, smoothing his few strands of hair over his head, ‘but I can assure you we shopkeepers, who are a respectable bunch, have the matter in hand. Wych Street is now regularly patrolled by a constable of the new police, and we are determined to raise the street’s tone. I myself was engaged in the capture of the ringleader of all the local pickpockets just under a month ago; now he is to be transported and his cohorts are blown to the winds.’

‘The ringleader, you say?’ Blake said distractedly.

‘Why yes, sir. Caught red-handed.’

‘Good gracious!’ said Blake. ‘My congratulations, good riddance! Mr er …’

‘Taylor, sir.’

Blake ran his hands over the pile of
Master Humphrey’s Clock
. ‘I cannot resist Mr Dickens.’

‘The death of little Nell, sir,’ Taylor said, with a dramatic sigh. ‘A masterpiece.’

‘Heart-rending. I had it from a circulating library. It would be a pleasure to glance over some chapters again. How many issues do you have here?’

‘I could give you a good price on those.’

‘Mmm,’ said Blake wistfully. ‘What a world he draws us. Such lessons.’

Taylor laughed suddenly, gleefully. ‘Funny you should mention that, sir. I’ve certainly found there’s a deal more to be learnt from Dickens than you would expect.’

Blake looked up innocently. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I’d best not go into it too deep,’ Taylor said, clearly very pleased with himself, ‘but I found that Mr Dickens was of great help when I least expected it.’

Blake came up to the counter and placed the pile of magazines upon it. ‘You’ve captivated me utterly now! You cannot leave me in suspense!’

Taylor leant forward. ‘Let us just say that I fixed that evil troublemaking pickpocket who had blighted our streets with the help of
The Old Curiosity Shop
!’

Blake gasped. ‘How marvellous! Literature coming to the rescue of life. Might I ask …?’

Taylor, smiled, his eyes shining. ‘A boy has five pounds planted upon him—’

‘You mean you planted five pounds?’

‘Well,’ said Taylor, aware that he might have said too much, ‘I’m not saying—’

‘But that is what you did?’

Taylor couldn’t resist a satisfied nod.

‘How did you manage it?’

‘I cannot really give out the details, sir, but believe me, we’ve bound him up good and proper.’

‘That is interesting, Mr Taylor.’ He gave an odd emphasis to the word, and the man looked up sharply. ‘And I’ve a witness too.’ Blake pointed at me. ‘Captain Avery?’ I straightened up and took off my cap.

‘What? Who are you?’ Taylor looked at Blake and then at me.

‘Jem Blake, Mr Taylor. I’m an inquiry agent. Perjury is a serious matter.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I want you to leave my shop.’

‘I’ll be doing that presently, but I want you to retract your accusation against that child.’

‘You cannot make me.’

‘You just admitted to fitting him up.’

‘I’ll deny everything. You cannot pin it on me.’

‘Think carefully before you say more, Mr Taylor. You don’t want to cross me.’

‘Get out! You’ve no proof.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

‘Well, he admitted it to us but he will deny it to anyone else. What can we do?’

‘He does not need to deny it. He needs to drop his accusation.’

‘And how, pray, is he to be persuaded to do that?’

‘It’s in hand, William, I promise you.’

The Bow Street police station was five storeys high and had a very grand façade of elegant classical stone. The effect was somewhat mitigated, however, by the unedifying collection of rogues and drunkards that hovered around the entrance. Blake had retrieved his nasty eyepatch and odorous corduroy jacket and wished to slip in on his own, undetected. I asked why we could not simply and openly pay our respects to a good man.

‘A police deadhouse is not a place to pay one’s respects,’ said Blake grimly. ‘And the last thing we need is to draw the coppers’ attention to us. This is Sergeant Loin’s station, and as far as he is concerned you are on your way home and I am recovering from a beating. But if I were to be taken – which I won’t be – I’d need you
to be free to make your politest representations to Collinson and Allington.’

‘But I was the last to see him,’ I protested. The more I thought of poor Dearlove, the more certain I was that I had made a terrible mistake in allowing him to report the body on his own. We argued for some minutes and then Blake limped off towards the station, leaving me loitering outside for all the world like one of the idle loafers I had scorned the first day I had walked down Holywell Street. And thus quite as well disguised as he. Why should I not follow him?

The interior of the station was a good deal less impressive than the grand façade: a series of plain whitewashed rooms leading on to a bare courtyard, on the other side of which there were grey-looking cells from where a constant ruckus of calls and drunken shouting emanated.

I could see Blake hobbling through the courtyard after a constable. I had hoped simply to follow him, but there was a sceptical-looking policeman sitting at a desk in the front office through whom it was clear I would have to go. Thankfully there was no sign of Loin. I asked – employing a light Devon burr of which I was quite pleased – if I might pay my respects to Mr Dearlove, who I’d been told was dead and who had been a rare kindly face in the courts and brought food and succour to my family.

The policeman looked up from a book in which he was making notes with pen and ink. ‘What do you know about the murder?’ he said sharply.

‘Nothing.’

‘What’s this about?’ he said. ‘There’s another just asked the same. It’s not a sight I’d choose to see.’

‘Just wanted to pay my respects. Didn’t know where he might be taken after this, not having no family of his own, so far as I knew.’ This was no more than the truth.

He continued to eye me suspiciously and insisted on taking my name – one I invented – and my address – I gave Matty’s – then bade me follow the old man and the constable with the keys through the courtyard. Blake gave me a sour look and the constable, selecting his keys, ignored me. At the farthest, coldest end of the courtyard
we descended some stone steps to a large wooden door. The constable opened it. It gave with a long painful squeak into a still dark cellar. The constable took a candle from his pocket and lit it. The room was cold as a tomb, the air damp and heavy, and there was a sharp, heady, metallic smell – I was grateful for it as it masked the smell of death. The body lay shrouded in a sheet on a long table that might have been an old door on trestles. Blake gestured and the constable, carrying his candle, went to the head and pulled back the sheet so we might see the face. Relaxed into the stone-grey repose of death, Dearlove seemed thinner and gaunter even than I remembered. I was glad his features had not been marred by wounds and knife cuts, but that was the barest consolation. There was no need to pretend to distress.