Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (21 page)

“Bloody right,” he nodded. “Copies of all the reports, mind.”

“All, sir? Right. Will they let me have them, sir?”

“They’d better. Check the other boroughs while you’re at it.”

I nodded efficiently. “Right, sir.”

“Then I want connections. They can’t all own newspapers. This bloody rag. Might ask where their information comes from.”

I stared at the article in frustration. “And yet there’s next to nothing been taken. Such a fuss about nothing.”

“Someone’s walking into the finest houses in London easy as you like. That’s hardly nothing.”

“Unless you were right at Pearson’s, sir, and they’re bribing people on the inside.”

“Where’s the sense in it? If it’s for documents, they’ve got a bloody library by now.” He thought a moment. “It’s in the details, I’ll tell you that. We need to know exactly what’s gone missing in each case. Then we’ll see it.”

We worked in silence for several hours. Then a further thought struck him as he got ready to go out.

“I’ve a feeling I had another case not so different from all this. Can’t place it, though. Write to my old sergeant, Jackman.”

“Right, sir.” It would feel odd writing to Jackman: like sending a note to my own ghost. “His address?”

“I don’t bloody know. Ask in the front office.” He left impatiently.

I smiled. Jackman had worked with him for years. But then he didn’t know where I lived either.

Shepherd Market had seen no kind of market for hundreds of years, but the smell of roast mutton emanated from the elegant tavern where a barmaid pointed out Groggins’ door. I knocked for some time. Indeed, I would have given up, had the barmaid not assured me that Groggins was in, only might not answer if he was teaching.

Sure enough, come seven o’clock, the door opened and a breathless Irishman greeted me cordially. “Sheridan Groggins, tutor in Elocution and the Dramatic Arts. Is there a problem?”

“No problem. Just a few questions.” I was watching him closely. He was an energetic, highly-strung sort of fellow, but seemed more at ease when I added, “About a certain Berwick Skelton.”

“Ah, is it Berwick?” He glanced up the stairs behind him, then turned back to me with a quizzical look. “Could you give me two moments to dispense with my pupil? If you’d stay out of sight, I’d greatly appreciate it. Without wishing to be rude, we none of us want to be thought of as the sort that has dealings with the police.”

He gave me a smile so charming I could hardly refuse. I hurried around the corner. A minute later, I heard him hail a cab. It passed me by, a fine lady peering out of the window.

Groggins invited me directly up the four flights to his apartment on the top floor. He threw open the French windows and stationed me out on an elegant tiled terrace.

“Quite a view you have,” I said, gazing out over Piccadilly towards Green Park. “Teaching elocution must bring in a few pennies.”

He grinned. “It’s a disreputable trade, officer, in that I tutor mostly actresses, debutantes, politicians and bishops, with a smattering of European royalty.”

“Are they not reluctant to learn English with an Irish accent?”

“Have you not heard?” He proceeded to elongate his vowels outrageously. “We Dubliners and you Edinburghers have the most fashionable English in the four kingdoms. Ah, Sergeant, don’t be alarmed now. Your accent’s quite unmistakable. Though I would hazard that you have spent, what, eighteen months here in the capital, which is roughening up your rounded tones. Do you not enjoy being a foreigner in your own land? Sure, it’s terrible hard for the eejits to place you, which is a tremendous advantage. As none of them can tell to which stratum of society we belong, they are obliged to treat us with a degree of courtesy which I consider most gratifying. Do you not find the same?”

Groggins talked as if he would never stop, of his family’s migration to London, his own entry into the Dramatic Arts, and subsequent prosperity from tweaking the vowels of the rich and the garish. “And they love me for it into the bargain, officer.”

Yet, even while he was talking about himself, I had the feeling he was sizing me up. I cut him off, and asked was it true that he taught an actress named Nellie.

“Why?” he said sharply.

Taken aback, I fetched around for an answer.

He softened his tone. “As a teacher of voice, one feels a certain compunction–”

“I mean her no ill. I’m simply looking for Skelton. I have a couple of questions I need answered.”

“What has the rascal done now?” he grinned. “It’s strange, you know. We all used to ask what was it that he was going to do.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow your meaning.”

He laughed an enigmatic little laugh. “No, I suppose you don’t. I’ve only the highest praise for Berwick, Sergeant, though our acquaintance was slight. Aside from recommending me to some pupils of the highest calibre – and the highest income – he comported himself charmingly, estimably, beyond reproach. Were I a man of his talents, I would feel myself quite justified in behaviour full of conceit. Yes, I taught Nellie, and a more enthused pupil I do not hope to find.”

“And this Nellie was connected to Skelton… romantically?”

“Connected?” he laughed, stepping in off the terrace to a little table covered with bottles and glasses to open a bottle of port. “Oh, I’ll say.” Without further bidding, he launched into an account of their entanglement: the Rise and Fall of Berwick Skelton, a tragedy in three acts. Framed in the proscenium of his French windows, Groggins made quite the theatrical tale of it.

She was a vivacious hoofer who dreamed of becoming a West End Lady. He was an idealistic young fellow with rather more elevated aspirations. Not content with the keen wit that made him the darling of the Clerkenwell lasses, he worked hard to become something more than another bore in a tavern. He read. He joined societies. He wrote articles, short, fiery pieces for the alternative press.

“I’ve had occasion to pass off his ideas as my own in polite conversation. It’s extraordinary how tellingly people react to a little social indignation.” He poured out two glasses and set down the bottle. “A beautiful couple they must have made, Sergeant. The brightest flower in the whole of East London, charmed by his wit and quietly confident that he was the man to lead her whither she wished to go.”

“Which was where?”

“Sergeant, when one is the coach of voice, one is something of a
confidant.
Nellie likes to fascinate. She seems an endless riddle that doesn’t give of a solution. But she does love things that sparkle. She loves the bright lights. Diamonds. Pearls.” He handed me a glass, holding on to it just a moment too long. “Don’t form an unkind picture of her, though. She’s no fool. She is drawn to sparkling people as well. She loves quick ripostes, duelling talk, and all the artillery that goes with good conversation, weapons as satisfying as a good port, Sergeant, only cheaper.”

“And she came to you to learn how to wield those weapons?”

“Ostensibly she came to fill out her voice. To take out the Hoxton and put in some Kensington. She thought that would be enough, along with her looks. She wanted to escape from the dancing halls and secure a few balcony scenes. I don’t pretend to be anything more than a teacher of voice, Sergeant. But occasionally people come to me as a sort of finishing school. Behind it all, you see, she wished to keep up with Berwick.”

“To keep up?”

“Yes. To be ready. For him to lead her into polite society, you see.”

“And did he?”

“He could have, you know. Theirs was an uncommon rise. But no. That was where it all fell down.” He frowned, staring out over the town as the lamps were being lit. “Berwick was no fool. Nellie wanted to make-believe she belonged there, but he never tried to hide his origins, he knew their value. Picture it, the editors of the progressive press toadying around him – just what they’ve always wanted, a brilliant mind, raised out of the sewers, self-taught, expressing the thoughts of the people more eloquently than the people would themselves. Look here, say these editors, we have our ear to the ground. We are attuned to the
vox populi
.”

“He wrote for them?”

“He did, though you could be forgiven for suspecting that they were interested less in his ideals than their newspaper sales. Still, Berwick and Nellie soon found themselves moving in captivating circles. You know, the Garrick Club, the
Punch
brotherhood. They found it intoxicating enough, I’d say, the both of them.”

“As do you, Mr Groggins?”

He laughed. “I flatter myself that I see through the shallowness of such things. But there’s no harm in a little shallowness, I tell myself. Still, we were talking of the doomed couple.”

“Why doomed?”

He began to sing in a fine warbling tenor:

The pretty horse-breakers ride out in the Row

And cause crowds to assemble wherever they go

But the one who is easily queen of them all

Is dainty Miss Nellie who holds us in thrall.

“The Row?” I said.

“Rotten Row, Hyde Park,” he explained. “Nellie was never the settling kind, you see. Hard to be quite content when your dreams come true. Not that she didn’t like Berwick. She did, I’m sure of that. But he was a very intense young man. He wanted to achieve, to change things, whereas Nellie is free of conviction. She was bound to tire of his intensity.” He smiled phlegmatically. “Mr Disraeli tells us we are one land divided into two nations. Berwick, now, he wanted to end all those injustices, while Nellie– ah, Nellie likes things as they are, only of course she wants to be on the other side from where she grew up.”

“So she dropped him?”

“She moved on.”

I was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for Berwick, so carelessly betrayed. “And he?”

Groggins sipped at his port. “A few years back now, he turned up here when she was meant to be having a lesson. Only she’d gone down with her new fellow to the Thames Tunnel. The anniversary fête, you know. I let slip that she was there, though I made no mention of her fancy man, as far as I recall.” He gulped down some more port, as if troubled by the memory. “‘Groggins,’ he says to me. ‘Groggins, if that self-satisfied interloper compromises her honour, I will entrap him in that tunnel. I will shut him up, and I will let in the filthy Thames to drown him. I will make it a warning to them all. We are not the playthings of the rich.’ That’s what he said. He was a most equable man, Berwick, but there was a fury in his eyes that day that frightened me.”

“Was her new man well-heeled?”

“Doubtless he was.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“There are limits to the questions one asks. Nellie sometimes hinted at dishonourable behaviour. Shameful practices in gentlemen’s clubs. There are still strata of society where people think that just because a girl is a maid or an actress she is, if you take my meaning, available. It’s quite shocking. You’d think we were still in the eighteenth century.”

For the first time, his frivolous tone was alloyed with steel, and I suspected that he was not as free of conviction as he would have me believe. “A sad end,” I said. “And now?”

“He’s vanished, as far as I know.”

“And she?”

“It’s many months since I have seen her. I assumed she’d been whisked off to some continental
chateau
or
schloss
. One cannot complain. In this line of work, pupils come and go. One takes an interest without involving oneself too much. Now, if you will excuse me, I am expecting another pupil.”

I sighed. As I was taking my leave, a chaise deposited a lady more or less identical to the previous pupil. I walked back towards town. Another cul-de-sac. I learned so much without coming any closer. Nobody knew their whereabouts, unless they were all lying. Of course, why should anyone want to tell me anything? I must change my way of thinking. Become tough-minded. Plain-spoken. Blunt. I must make it in their interest to tell me what I wanted to know.

As I headed back across town, I bumped into Worm. It was a time since he’d presented himself at the Yard, and he’d treated himself to leather patches on the elbows of his jacket in the interim.

“What you been up to?” said he, with a half-hearted grin.

“Seeing an elocution teacher. A man who teaches you to speak properly.”

“Oh, yes? Curious accent you have. Pity to change it, though. Cost a pretty penny too, I’d imagine?”

“Beyond my means, and yours. But you speak well enough, you wee rascal.”

“That’s kind of you, old cove.”

“Here, what’s wrong, wee man?” I said, taken aback by the doleful tone in his voice. “Has somebody died?”

“No reason, old cove,” he smiled brightly. “Just the general grimness of it all.”

THE FOURTH PERIOD

(MID TO LATE 1861)

THE BUGLE – PASSAGES IN LENDING LIBRARY BOOKS
DIRTY LAUNDRY – MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO
I WEEP CONTINUALLY – A PRINCE AMONGST MEN
PHILANDERING PRINCES & CRAZED CUCKOLDS