Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (15 page)

“Election fever, so they call it.” He cast a withering glance behind us, as our driver headed off, weaving between the newsmen and the roadworks lining the Bayswater Road. “What business have they, asking me who I might vote for?”

I breathed out with relief. “People value your view, sir. As a pillar of society.”

He snorted. This was the third theft now, all of a piece, which suggested that we had it wrong at Pearson’s, and Wardle was irritated. Worse, the press were banging on the door when we had barely begun our investigations, as if someone in the household had tipped them off.

“Waste of time and money, elections,” he grumbled. “New issues every time, and they never address any real problems. If you ask me, they should have done with them chattering politicians. Like dancing bears, they are. Choose a proper king.”

“Sir!”

“Oh yes, I’m a royalist. I make no bones about it. We’ve had a few duff ones, I’ll admit. Mad ones too. But this German is a prince among men and no mistake.” With that, he fell to staring out the window. The rest of the journey we sat in silence.

It was a new year. My excitement at joining the Yard wore off, as surely as the seasons turned. By the time the Professor brought Miss Villiers’ note – some weeks after my day in the library – I had given up on the spout. Wardle was right. The possibilities were infinite, the evidence negligible.

Yet that name pulled me up short. Where had I heard it before? That night, in the hospital. From the matron, Bunny. “Good Mr Skelton,” she had said. An incontrovertible connection: the man who had brought Shuffler to hospital was a student of hydraulics.

It did seem extraordinary. I had been chosen, however, not for extraordinary duties, but for mundane ones. Indeed, perhaps it was good for me, that knock-back from Wardle. I must determine to be a useful, obliging sergeant, like Darlington and the rest. I was enjoying increased wages, more regular hours. There was even time to slip into the theatre of an evening, if I had the inclination. Why risk Wardle’s wrath? Why throw my chance away?

The Edgar Allan Poe book lay by my bedside like an unfulfilled promise. I read a couple of the tales, but found them fantastical. I felt I owed Miss Villiers an explanation, but somehow I kept putting it off. Before I knew it, Christmas had come and gone. I kicked myself for my ill manners. In January, I scribbled her a desultory card reiterating my lunch invitation, and asked Worm to deliver it; but I heard nothing back.

The next day, Wardle stomped in late and threw the papers on my desk. “Bloody newsmen, eh?”

I read the headline in surprise. “Skeleton thefts?”

“Sensationalism. Make the public restless with their jumped-up claptrap. A name for everything they have. Their Great Stink and their Road House murder. Skeleton thefts, I ask you.”

I skimmed through two or three quasi-fictional accounts of the theft at Paxton’s. Contrasted with rather jocular references to Wardle were weighty evaluations of Paxton himself. Designer of the Crystal Palace. Botanist, architect, engineer. Liberal MP, inventor and railway promoter. “I don’t understand, sir, why they make one little theft so important, just because he’s well known.”

Wardle snorted. “He’s got his finger in a few pies. They all have, that railway lot. Remember Hudson? Owned half the papers. That’s how he had the clout to get the filthy things built. I’ll give you two-to-one on, Paxton’s got money in a couple of these rags.” He must have noticed my expression of shock. “How long have you lived here, Watchman? Have you not noticed how money talks? If they say it’s good, it’s because they’re selling it. If they say it’s bad, they haven’t got shares in it – yet. Simple as that.”

I stared at the papers, as if they might turn into a pumpkin. “Sir, shouldn’t we warn Hudson to invest in guard dogs?”

“Why’s that?”

“The thieves clearly have a partiality for railway developers.” Wardle gave the bark that served him for laughter. “Hudson lost his pile in ’47. The week of terror, they called it. He’s still in exile for fraud, far as I know, despised and debt-ridden. Still, there’s something in what you say.”

So Coxhill’s hero-worship was indeed misplaced.

“Tell you what, Watchman.” Wardle put his hand to his brow. “Do some digging around. See where Paxton’s interests lie. And the others, why not? Not least which papers they back. Publishing nonsense like this! There’s times I’d like a little something to shake in their faces as a warning.”

I could think of no better place to look into Paxton’s holdings than the British Museum Library. I had forgotten, though, that my reader’s card was only valid for a month. They would not permit me to enter, nor renew my pass without a further recommendation from Wardle. I asked for Miss Villiers, thinking she might put in a special word for me. She was unavailable. I tried to write a note, but the appropriate words eluded me.

I hurried away down Museum Street, gritting my teeth at the awkward prospect of asking Wardle again, when a voice called to me from a doorway.

“Sergeant Lawless?” Out came Miss Villiers, wrapped in a long coat that would have suited the Tsarina. “It
is
you! I thought you’d vanished quite away. You’re rather overdue with that lunch you promised me.”

She waved away my mumbled apologies with a disdainful gesture, taking hold of my sleeves and dragging me into the tea room.

“I see.” She arched her brows. “You are in too much of a hurry to stop with me.”

“I’m working,” I protested, laughing. “At least, I really can’t stop long.”

“Well, don’t let me delay you, officer. I wouldn’t like to be guilty of keeping a detective from his work through some womanish fancy for tea and cakes.”

I demurred, of course, explaining all at once how helpful she had been, how sorry I was, what an awkward situation I now had, and so on and so forth.

Before I could object, she ordered a pot of tea and scones. Thus obliging me to stay at least a while, she gushed with questions like water from a Highland spring. “Have you found the chap? I’ve been watching like a hawk, but not a peep. I was worried that my indiscretion had led to his arrest. Of course, I’m jumping to conclusions, assuming he has committed a crime. Otherwise, why should you be looking for him? And why should he hide himself?”

I was so relieved to see her, and not to be in her bad books, I quite forgot my usual reticence. It was no longer police business, I reasoned to myself, and thus no longer confidential. So I spoke of the spout, of the repair man and the cadaver, and of my first investigations. “We have not apprehended the man,” I confessed finally. “Nor have we solved the case. Indeed, the inspector has no intention of making further enquiries, and I am bound to comply. You are right, though, in thinking I suspected this man of doing something, if not criminal, at least highly irregular. I’m sorry I left you in the dark. Only, with my work and Inspector Wardle–”

“This Wardle of yours.” She gave a look of mock disdain. “Has he no curiosity?”

“He is not a character out of Mr Poe.” I smiled. “I must return your book.”

“No hurry. I have books enough at my disposal.” She idly stirred her cup of tea. “That address, though. It’s a public house, did you know? I just happened to be passing through Clerkenwell one day.”

“Just happened to be?” I nodded. “Did you ask for our man?”

She looked offended. “Sergeant, would it be proper for a young lady to enter a public house alone?” She laughed. “Besides, I suddenly thought it suspicious. What kind of chap would give as his address a public house?”

“That could admit of a simple answer.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Someone with something to hide?”

“Someone who lives in a pub,” I countered. “It’s not uncommon for gentlemen whose resources run low to hire chairs in taverns.” I thought better of telling her that I myself had stopped in a corner of the Old Red Lion before securing Mrs Willington’s garret. “There needn’t be a mystery behind every detail, you know. That’s what you learn when you work in the real police force.”

“Is it?” She flared her nostrils. “Why, then, pray tell, should our Mr Skelton have stopped using the library?”

“Are you quite sure he has?”

“Yes.” She stared at me. “Unless he comes in disguise.”

“Have you checked with your colleagues?”

She made a face. “They would consider it most inappropriate for me to ask. As the youngest librarian, and a single lady, I must consider my every action scrupulously.”

“Could you not check his card? See if he has been consulting any books?”

“I might be able to do that,” she nodded, “and you might find the time for a visit to the Rose and Crown in Clerkenwell.”

I hesitated.

“It’s at the corner of Red Lion Street and Victoria Road,” she said, holding back a smirk, “in case you’d forgotten, Sergeant.”

“I shall visit it,” I promised, “if only to clear away the cobwebs of a mystery that was never a mystery. I wonder, might your bearded revolutionary help us?”

“It may have been he that warned our man to stay away. Still, I may try to pick his brains, if I can do so surreptitiously.” She raised her teacup. “Here’s to detective fever.”

“And the passing of that fever,” I nodded, “with as few casualties as possible.”

THE ROSE &?CROWN

“ALL PATRONS ARE REQUESTED” – announced a placard by the stairs to the tavern – “BEFORE ENTERING THE SALOON TO LEAVE AT THE BAR THEIR KNIVES AND PISTOLS, OR ANY OTHER WEAPON THEY MAY HAVE ABOUT THEM.”

I had changed out of uniform before leaving work. I went wrong in the backstreets skirting Liquorpond Row, but I came suddenly upon the Session House which stood at the head of both Victoria Street and Red Lion Street, its door daubed with the words “Closed Prior to Demolition”. Across the square, like the gatehouse of the labyrinth, stood the Rose and Crown.

I decided I must bide my time. Accordingly, I bought myself a pint of watery ale and listened in to conversations, as the place began to fill. A miraculous assembly it was too. Since the troubles of ’48, Edinburgh had had its share of European emigrés, but never had I seen anything like this. Besides the navvies labouring on the canal and the Irish from the underground train, there were French and Germans, Dutchmen and Greeks. Spanish fishermen; Norwegians in the ice trade; Italians from the Sadler’s Wells, their earrings twinkling as they twirled their moustaches. There was a Moor with a crimson cummerbund; a Slav girl selling posies; there was even a Chinaman, with his pigtails rolled up under a British Navy cap. These diverse specimens of humanity formed energetic circles around small tables, as a ragtag trio struck up one jig after another, as if disconcerted that nobody was dancing. At the bar, a weasel of a man with a mop of oily hair was eyeing me warily. I retreated to the corner furthest from the hearth.

At the table nearest the musicians a heated discussion arose. On a sudden, a fellow with a broad smile slammed down his tankard and called out. “Come on, boys. Give us ‘Fast Fade the Roses of Pleasure’, will you?”

The discussion was momentarily stilled, as the fiddler spoke to the drummer. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he said in soft Irish tones, “but we don’t know it.”

“Lads, lads,” the man insisted. “Come on and strike it up for us.”

“Honestly, sir. Only that it’s not a part of our repertory.”

The man insisted, his smile tightening. “Look, boys. I’m a musician, too, you know.” There was laughter at his table. He stood up, rounding upon them. “What’s that? I’ll play rhythm with your bones if you ain’t respectful. Will you play ‘The Roses of Pleasure’ or won’t you, boys?”

The man’s companions eyed each other meaningfully, as the musicians conferred. “We can do ‘The Last Rose of Summer’,” said the fiddler, “or ‘The Roses of Picardy’.”

“Damn you,” the man exploded, his smile devilishly wide. “You come here with your outlandish tunes, but you don’t learn the old songs.” With a roar, he swept his table clear of glasses. “Damn your eyes,” he shouted above the clatter, and he seemed ready to leap at the musicians, if his companions had not risen as a man and pinned him against the wall. They lifted him up, as if it were the commonest thing, and carried him over the broken glass, across the straw-covered floor, and out the back of the tavern.

Hesitantly, the band struck up again and everyone went back to their chatter. When the barmaid brought me another pint, I caught her by the sleeve.

“If you please,” I began, meaning to sound offhand, “have you a fellow living here by the name of Skelton?”

She showed me a face as stony as if I had spoken Greek.

I fumbled in my pocket and drew out Miss Villiers’ note, staring at the name I had read so many times. “Yes, that was it. Berwick Skelton. Don’t you know him?”

She scurried back to the bar, and a series of whispers were exchanged. Eyes darted in my direction, and I heard the weasel of a man ask, “Who is it wants to know?”

I found myself stared at by a hundred eyes full of mistrust. A panic went through me. The weasel man knew very well it was I who had enquired. Yet he gave no sign of coming over to me. I took a sip of my ale and rose to go up to him, where he was leaning against the bar. Three seafaring types, however, were seated at a table in front of me. Large as whales and quite as intractable, they gave way not an inch, and I was obliged to call out from where I stood.