Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (16 page)

“I’m looking for–” I began. “Would you know if–” I faltered. It seemed strangely impersonal to call him Berwick Skelton; Mr Skelton sounded formal; Berwick too familiar. Besides, I was giving myself away with the way I was speaking: far too polite, like a toff or a foreigner. I tried to roughen my tones. “A mutual friend told us I’d find this particular fellow here.”

“Did they?” the weasel nodded. He looked slowly around the room, as if our chat was a show for the benefit of the whole tavern. He turned to the barmaid, restraining a smirk. “Sal, do you know anyone by the name that the gentleman mentioned?”

The barmaid went about her business, stony-faced.

The weasel looked disappointed. He looked around the tavern again. “Has nobody heard of–” He looked at me. “Forgive me. What was the name again, sir?”

Feeling trapped as a mouse in a cage, I said it again. “Berwick Skelton.”

How can I describe the ripple that surged around the room? Around every table, they glanced from one to another. There was none of the posturing that would accompany such a scene in a theatrical melodrama. No facial histrionics, no whispered questions. How, then, was I so sure that they were all, every last one of them, only dissembling ignorance?

“I’m afraid,” said the weasel, running a hand through his unkempt hair, “we can’t help you, officer.”

My heart sank. He knew me for a policeman. Was it so obvious? I should have dressed differently, spoken differently. I should have prepared some elaborate alibi.

“A drink for the officer, Sal. Whisky, is it? You are a Scot, if I ain’t mistaken.”

I could not give up before I had begun. I returned his gaze. “Thank you.”

The weasel gave a nod. As if by magic, the musicians struck up anew. Conversation resumed, and the seafaring types allowed me to pass.

“The thing is, officer,” said the weasel as I joined him at the bar, “you have to be careful round these parts. Don’t get me wrong. Only we’ve had, shall we say, a little awkwardness with colleagues of yours of late.”

“I’m sorry to hear of it,” I mumbled.

“Well,” he said with a dismissive gesture, “it’s just unfortunate. You may have seen how they’re digging up the roads around here. Progress, you see. Underground trains, iron ships, whatever. I’m all for it. Sadly, though, some of the lads have had their houses quite swep’ away. There’s talk of leafy suburbs being built, for us to remove to, you see, though I for one would rather stay here, where I was born and raised.”

“Of course.”

“Only it appears some very important businesses have purchased the land. Corporations. Practices of law and medicine and oculism. They want their premises up and running as soon as possible. Who can blame them? Accordingly, they’ve engaged the police to exert a little persuasive force. Only as nobody’s told us the whereabouts of these leafy suburbs as yet, there lurks that doubt in our minds, you see. As to whether the leafy suburbs actually exist.”

“Yes,” I mumbled. “That’s a problem, I grant you.”

“Come, come. It ain’t your fault, is it? Nevertheless, dear chap, you’ll understand, it’s disappointing when the police – our protectors, as we’re told – start knocking our houses down. Which is why a copper strolling in here does not meet with the most generous reception.”

There was a shout from below. “Ho-ho!”

I turned to see the smiling man, reeling drunkenly back in, to the hilarity of all.

“Ah,” said the weasel. “The music lover returns. But you can see, even if we did happen to know of what you were enquiring, which we don’t, we might be less than inclined to divulge it.”

“This the copper, then?” The drunk man lurched up towards me. Something about his features was oddly familiar. “Been ’specting you, we have. What you after, eh?”

Seeing no harm in it, I mentioned Skelton’s name again.

The drunk frowned. “John,” he said to the weasel, “do we have a gentleman under that particular monicker in these vicinitudes?”

“Don’t know that we do, Smiler, old mate. What would you suggest the officer do?”

“I do not know, John, my old friend, my old charpering homie. How about you ask down the Academy?” Somebody behind me laughed. The drunk turned on them reprovingly. “A lot of gentlemen are Academaticians, you know.”

“Ask the hoofers,” somebody called out, “down the Haymarket.”

This drew chuckles all around.

“Ask Charles Dickens.”

Further laughter.

“Ask the Prince of Wales.”

This brought a bellow of laughter.

“Ask his fiancée.”

“If you can find her!”

“I am sorry,” said the weasel impassively, as the chorus of guffaws grew more and more raucous. “The lads do get carried away. But rest assured, nobody knows nothing.”

At this, the drunk roared with laughter.

The whisky rasped at my throat, but I drank it down, threw a few pennies on the bar, and hurried out.

Note from British Museum Library: Berwick Skelton’s Studies:

Dear Sergeant,

By gosh, you were right. What a job he must have had of it, avoiding my hours. So it appears that he knows. That is unfortunate, I admit. Yet, if he does not want to be found, that means he has something to conceal. Wherefore we want to find him all the more.

I have checked his card and the fellow’s been reading as much as ever. His recent areas of study are:

a. Engineering journals. Besides hydraulics, he has a predilection for tunnels.

b. Dissolvent literature. Social pamphlets, political pamphlets, the
Poor Man’s Guardian
, the
Black Dwarf
, the
Beehive
, pretty much everything my poor father would wish me to steer clear of.

Now I may be mistaken, but I believe he has taken a couple of cuttings. (Imagine! I suppose it shows a deep interest, if a lack of community spirit.) An engraving from the
Illustrated London News
: a depiction of the Queen’s outing through the filthy Thames Tunnel in 1843. Also, a section from one of Mr Dickens’ angrier editorials in
Household Words
. Until I locate another copy, I cannot say precisely what he excised, but it was the conclusion to a fiery piece in Chartist vein.

That comprises his reading for the past year. If you wish, I shall look through everything he has taken out since he joined in ’58. Glancing down the titles, there is a deal of literature, though I notice also some issues of the
Red Republican
, which published a translation of the bearded revolutionary’s inflammatory pamphlet. When I have summoned the confidence to brave his beard, I will be in contact again. Kindly send the Professor in a week.

Yours feverishly,

Miss R. Villiers

LORD’S

I was disheartened by my debacle in Clerkenwell, and could neither bring myself to ask Wardle for a new recommendation to the library, nor to write to Miss Villiers with such a rotten report. She sent her note by penny post to my garret, to avoid arousing Wardle’s suspicions, and it quite put the spring back in my step. The same day, at lunchtime, Worm’s friend, the Professor, turned up at the Yard with a further letter, addressed in a spidery hand:

Esteemed Police, namely Lawless,

Remembering your injunction that you should like to know more about my mechanisms, the injury and larceny thereof, please to come today to the sporting green of Lord’s new cricket ground, St John’s Wood.

I have been called upon by the Marylebone Cricket Club to do some repairs in situ and wish you to understand that the mechanism installed there was a species of prototype for the clock you admired at Euston, now destroyed.

If you should care to come along, I should be glad to see light shed upon these obscure, nefarious dealings. I shall be there at lunchtime.

Yours in all sincerity,

B.N. Ganz, Esq.

Allnutt & Ganz, Watchmakers of Distinction

I certainly did care to go along. I was pleased to think that an inquiry made so long ago might yet bear fruit. But how to tackle Wardle? I hurried in without a strategy, and was taken aback to find him at my desk, consulting the newspaper’s sporting pages.

“Spit it out, youngster,” he barked. He always knew when I had something to say.

“Reading about the cricket, sir? I’d like to go to this Lord’s ground.”

“A Scots cricket fanatical?” His eyes narrowed and he started making a peculiar noise. It took me a few moments to realise that he was laughing. It was the first time I had heard him properly laugh. “Full of surprises you are, son.”

“I used to watch it as a child, sir, in Edinburgh.” I had no more watched cricket than I had been to the moon.

“I was unaware that you Scots enjoyed sporting activities, beyond sword skipping and log tossing.” A faraway look came into his eye. “Oh, I was a useful bowler, when I was young underarm, mind you. Never made my peace with it since they messed with the laws. It’s all bloody round-arm these days, like ladies. Or out-and-out chucking. I blame the locomotive trains. People think time is money and speed’s of the essence. Foolish claptrap. Where’s the subtlety in it, I ask you? Where’s the guile?”

Terrified he might interrogate me on some intricacy of the game, I just grimaced.

“Nothing pressing to be done here.” He frowned, a rueful, indulgent frown. “I won’t join you. Another time, perhaps. Go for the day, if you like.”

To my surprise, the Professor was still outside, spinning a top back and forth on a string. He stuffed it in his pocket and doffed his cap. “Good day, officer.”

“Good day again, yourself. Professor, tell Ganz I’ll see him there, would you?”

“I could, sir,” he intoned. He had an impish tone, the Professor. The nasality of an archbishop, with great elongated vowels. When he said “rather,” it sounded like “rawther;” in place of “can’t” was “caun’t,” like the heavyweight, Big Ben Caunt; Lord Palmerston more like “Paw-miss-tin”. He hesitated. “Only as how he didn’t rightly ask for a reply.” He had read the note, of course, and he was eager to come with me. “Worm should be along any minute. He’s a cricket fiend.”

Worm fell in beside us in the Regent’s Park. He presented me with a sweet pastry that he had doubtless pinched from a street trader. “Didn’t know you played, old cove.”

“There’s a lot we don’t know about each other. Beautiful day, though, isn’t it?” I said, ruffling the Professor’s hair, which made him crinkle up his eyes in annoyance. “Makes you glad to be alive, boys.”

“Oh, now.” Worm shot me a reproachful look. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

It was comical to watch the two of them together. The Professor was a charming wee fellow with a snub nose and gritty red hair, who clearly thought the world of Worm, and Worm took advantage of this to the hilt.

“Give us a ha’penny,” said Worm. The little fellow complied reluctantly. Worm held the coin up in the sunlight. “Observe closely.”

With a click of his fingers, he made the thing disappear. I applauded.

“Bleeding heck,” cried out the Professor, stamping his feet with a peculiar dignity. “Why is it always my ha’penny? Why couldn’t you have asked the hofficer?”

“Cut the stamping, you daft bat,” said Worm. “It’s a fair spell before you’re due boots.”

The notion that these urchins planned their expenditure far in advance impressed me no end. Nonetheless, on reaching the gates of the ground, I proffered the entrance charge for the three of us. “These junior officers,” I explained, “are helping me with my inquiry.”

“A likely story,” said the gate man, frowning severely. “Helping themselves, more like it. There’s been enough petty thefts this month to feed an army. And fires.”

Before I could reason with the fellow, Worm piped up, “We don’t want into your poxy ground. Who’s on the card, anyhow?”

“Lillywhite,” said the man reverently. “Wisden, Grace, and Tear ’em Tarrant.”

“What do you think, Professor? Worthy of our friend’s hard-earned pennies?”

“Worthy?” the man laughed. “These are the most famous men in the ’ole country.”

“Excepting good Queen Vic,” said Worm, “and her princes.” With a snap of the fingers, he retrieved the lost ha’penny from out of the Professor’s ear and presented it to me with a whisper. “Sneak us in, can’t you?”

“I think you’ll find,” said the Professor with a huffy expression, “that Mr Charles Dickens is even more famouser than that lot.”

“I’ll watch them,” I promised the man. I paid for the boys, and returned the Professor’s ha’penny, as I thought my income a little steadier than his.

As we passed under the canopy of the spectators’ stand, I was astonished to see a portly, mustachioed gent running hell-for-leather towards me, as if fleeing a crime. He bent over, thrusting his tightly-clad white backside in our faces. He picked up a ball and proceeded to hurl it into the distance with a grunt to rival the Highland Games practitioners. This performance earned him a round of genteel applause, which he accepted with a self-deprecating gesture.