Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (39 page)

“Good at parlour games, is she?”

“The minotaur, sir, was a monster who required maidens delivered fresh to sate his filthy appetites. Who ended up dead in the labyrinth on the end of a great hero’s sword. He was the son of the king and the shame of the kingdom.”

“And this woman knows all about it, does she?”

“Of course not,” I said, though I feared Miss Villiers knew more than she let on.

“I won’t have it. You’re not a bloody inspector yet. You’ll wait your turn to behave so recklessly.” He pursed his lips. “Talk to everyone again. If he’s been murdering left, right and centre, somebody will talk. Somebody has to talk before he carries out his threat.”

“I’ve all but cracked it,” said Miss Villiers. “I’ve matched cipher annotations in the margins of these books to two of the threats: ‘
blind in blood
’ and ‘
Guy Fawkes was a genius
’. That’s half the alphabet. I will keep guessing until I crack the rest. If I could compare a longer section of code to a piece in proper English, I’d have it. For instance…” She dabbed at some splashes on the table, then took from her bag a pristine edition of a periodical, screwing up her nose as she set it down gingerly. “This, I’ve borrowed from the stack.”

“But it’s a reading library, Miss Villiers, not a lending library.”

“Shush and look at page twenty-four.”

“The
Beehive
,” I frowned as I flicked through it. “Edited by George Potter?”

“Of the trades unions, yes.” She pointed to an article entitled “The Shameful Slums of the Bethnal Green”. It was a polemical piece, warning of the consequences of leaving the East End to stew in its poverty – threatening even. “Very commendable, but hardly relevant.”

She pointed out the author’s name. “Berton Kelswick. Does it not sound familiar?” She sighed. “It’s an anagram, you nincompoop. I’ve found several articles under that name in different papers. It has all the hallmarks. He likes Milton, he likes Dante, he likes floods and apocalypses. He’s angry about socio-political injustice.”

The Bethnal Green piece seemed somehow familiar. I frowned at the periodical. “But what is he going to do?”

“Overturn the System. Punish the Oppressor. The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” She took a sip of tea. “That would my guess, at least.”

I stared at her. “How? When?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at me. “He loves planning. He loves righteous tales and inflammatory literature. And he writes. I’ll wager you this, your Mr Skelton will have written down his plan in as much detail as any engineer.”

I shook my head. “A cunning criminal wouldn’t.”

“He’s not a criminal. He’s a visionary. He probably won’t even have hidden it.”

“Now you’re being silly. Why would he not hide it?”

“Because he’ll have written it in code.” She leaned towards me. “Remember that notebook you saw at his mother’s?”

When I went back to the Rose and Crown, it had gone.

“What you gawping at, copper?”

I turned to face a little tyke. Not one of Worm’s, as far as I knew. “The tavern,” I gasped. “The street…”

You could not simply say it had been demolished. Rather the whole slum of rookeries to which it had stood as portal had been annihilated, sacrificed to Progress. The bold new extension of the Euston Road was already swarming with traffic all the way down to the City. Between this new Farringdon Road and the gentrified centre of Clerkenwell, the engineers had left a chasm, as if they looked at the borough like surgeons and decided to excise the whole area round the cattle market in the hope of reducing infection. Cut and cover, only they had conveniently forgotten to cover.

“Oh yes.” The little fellow nodded like an old man. “Gone the way of all flesh, eh? We must have this new train, you see. Pity, ’specially for them as lived here.”

I turned to him earnestly. “Where have they gone, by God?”

“I moved in with relations, being on more or less good terms, luckily. Those that couldn’t, some are drunk, some in prison, some gone to hell.” He wiped his nose carelessly on his sleeve. “Looking for someone?”

The boy was amusing and I was happy to give him sixpence. But when I spoke Madame Skelton’s name, he hesitated. For an instant I thought he was going to give the coin back. Instead, he drew his hat low over his eyes and pointed to the last building still standing beside the excavations, a great cowshed where the cattle market had stood.

“She might be in there,” he murmured, preparing to scarper, “and then again, she might not.”

Crossing the bridge that carried the Clerkenwell Road across the vast cutting, I looked down towards the grand new station. And to the other side, two tunnels from King’s Cross emerged from the earth, the rails criss-crossing in dizzying confusion.

As I neared the shed. I spotted a lanky young man, in a long overcoat, watching the door. He was pretending to pass the time of day with a quiet smoke, but he made a point of monitoring all the comings and goings. Had Wardle set guard over the place? Or was it one of Berwick’s associates? I thought of challenging him openly, asking what the game was. But instead I turned tail and hurried away, my mind buzzing.

Back over the bridge, I noticed one little shop that had survived the upheaval. I stepped into the clockmaker’s, fully expecting another earful from the distasteful little man. The sight that greeted me was shocking. Ganz was wasted away. He barely seemed to recognise me.

“It’s a scandal,” he muttered. “A scandal and no mistake. That’s what it is. There’s you and ten thousand busybodies, hobnobbing around town, yet you don’t raise a finger to help honest artisans like myself. Highly trained, I am, qualified in the highest arts of clockmaking. Spent my best years studying, and paying the debts from my studies. What good has it done me? None, when the unscrupulous rip open my pieces and copy ’em. Shameless! They churn ’em out by the thousand in manufactories, assembled by wretched northerners for slave wages. I thought mine was an ancient trade and respected. I thought it would never die. I said as much to the Guild. I said, what future is there for us if we sit back while our kingdom is snatched from us?”

I looked at him. I too had thought the clockmaker’s art safe from the wheels of industry. “What did they say,” I asked, “at the Guild?”

He gave me a hollow look. “They laughed. Half of them are struggling like me.”

“And the other half?”

“The other half own the factories.”

The spy was still outside the cowshed. But, I asked myself, on whose behalf was he spying? I turned north and followed the cutting back up towards King’s Cross, amazed to see the old roads gone, or hidden beneath viaducts. I passed the new Metropolitan station, in front of the Great Northern Terminus, and continued up York Way, where I chanced upon Hunt driving the chaise out of the yard gates, his master within. A feeling of unease gripped at my stomach. I should have talked to Coxhill sooner, but I felt our night on the town somehow gave him a power over me.

“Constable!” Coxhill bellowed. “Step up smartly. Looking for me, are you?”

I told him I had business in Clerkenwell. He was headed for Mayfair, but as I climbed up he directed Hunt back the way I had come. I would only have a few moments. “Sir,” I began, “do you know–”

“Have a snifter, old man,” he said, brandishing a hip flask. “Don’t tell me it’s too early. I know you Scotch. Whisky in your porridge, isn’t that right?”

“Mr Coxhill–”

“Can’t tempt you?” He faced me with a charming smile, but I felt he was tensed for a shock. “You won’t mind if I do.”

“Not at all.” I coughed. “Only tell me this. I am looking for a man named Skelton. Do you know him?”

The cab swerved, jolting us sideways. Up front Hunt cursed loudly.

“I do beg your pardon,” said Coxhill pleasantly. He drew out his handkerchief and dabbed at a few spots of brandy splashed on to the seat.

There were drops on my trousers too and for a moment I feared he would mop them up as well. “Berwick Skelton,” I repeated.

He frowned thoughtfully, but something outside stole his attention. “Hunt, stop the car. We’re nearly at Ludgate Circus, God damn it. I am sorry, Sergeant.”

“No matter. But, sir–”

“Yes, yes. Burton, you say? Name rings a bell. You’ll want to descend this side, old man. Avoid the rotten traffic.”

“I do not care to descend at all, sir,” I said firmly, “until you answer me plainly. I’m sure you have met him.”

“Oh yes?” He scratched at his neck. “Can’t say where, for the life of me.”

“At Mr Dickens’ house, for instance.”

His birdlike eyes darkened. “I can’t put a face to the name. But Dickens will invite any old johnny-come-lately. I say, you don’t mean one of the servants, do you?”

The door of the chaise swung open and Hunt appeared. “Allow me to help you down,” he said and fairly wrenched me out onto the pavement. Coxhill prattled away by way of taking leave, and the chaise sprayed my trousers with mud as they pulled away. Was Coxhill playing games? Perhaps Miss Kate had played up their clashes, for Skelton seemed not to have impinged upon his memory at all.

I came back at the cowshed from the Smithfield side, sneaking in while the youth was lighting up again. I found myself in a den of hopelessness. Half of Clerkenwell was squeezed in there. Bodies huddled together upon blankets and straw that smelt as if it had not been changed since the cattle left. Good God, I thought, what is this place? Have they herded the dispossessed out of sight while they build grand offices on the wrecks of their homes?

My whispered questions brought mistrustful glances. But for two farthings I was pointed towards a gloomy corner. There, to my amazement, stood the great brass bed from the Rose & Crown. Tucked up in clean linen, amidst a mountain of packing cases, lay Berwick’s mother, exuding a beatific aura at odds with the disorder about her.

“Madame Skelton,” I said, reining in my astonishment. “May I speak with you?”

She reached out and squeezed my fingers, the warmth of her hand surprising me. “The benign police,” she said. “A pleasure. Will you have a cup of tea?”

This left me at a loss. Did the poor woman not understand where she was?

She saw my concern. “Our circumstances,” she assured me, “are somewhat reduced. But look past the dishevelment and you will see we still have some graces.
Alors
, child! Tea for the gentleman.” A nearby lad scurried off towards a steaming urn.

“Graces aplenty,” I said. “But, Madame, what has brought you to this pass?”

“The housing they have promised is not ready. Soon, they tell me. What use is soon to me? Ah, your tea.” She took a tin cup from a bedraggled child and handed it to me. “Now, tell me, young man. What news have you of my Berwick?”

My heart was ready to burst for her. The shame of it, for a life like hers to end here, in a cowshed. Despite her vivacious air, the pallor of her skin spoke of the shocks she had endured; the sharpness of her cheekbones of hunger. I managed a rueful smile. “I hoped to ask you the same. He wouldn’t leave you in a place like this, would he?”

She inclined her head. “He is busy, I am sure of it.”

“You don’t think he has gone away? Like Fairfoul said?”

“Not at all. John Fairfoul has always been a naughty boy. Let me not speak of jealousy. But he has grown up in Berwick’s shadow. I dare say, though he misses him, there is a part of him that is glad to see my boy gone. He tells me not to raise up my hopes. Let me tell you a secret.” She leaned forward and spoke softly. “I saw him. He came, before they knocked down the inn. He came late at night to see me.”

I nodded forlornly. I wished for her sake it were true, but I feared that Fairfoul was right, that she was deluded, summoning up ghosts of days gone past.

“Yes, he will be busy with these schemes of his. Writing. Studying. Mixing with the lofty upper sets. His father was the same, you know. When Monsieur Brunel and Monsieur Stephenson took him on, well, on grand engineering projects you have not time to waste. Everything must be drawn and redrawn, drafted and rechecked. Can you imagine? It was a struggle for his father, who only learnt his letters late in life. Reading was a chore for him. He studied at the Red Lion College, you know. Prince Albert gave him a medal. I have it here somewhere.”

Before I could assure her she need not look for it, she reached under the bed, with surprising agility, and heaved out a brass cornered wooden trunk. I hefted it up for her, wondering if it did not contain all the secrets I needed to unravel Skelton’s plan. I glanced around, suddenly conscious of so many eyes fixed upon us. My arrival had doubtless been broadcast across the length and breadth of London.

“Let me see,” she said. Taking a tiny key from her pendant, she unlocked the box, and drew out the faded sheet that used to hang above her bedside, by the engraving of the banquet in the tunnel. Red Lion Club, the Royal Seal and that florid signature – a signature I now recognised as Prince Albert’s. Her stories were not all vain dreams, then.

She replaced it among her treasured heirlooms, and smiled, drawing out a little daguerreotype in a silver frame. She gazed at it fondly. “Happier days. Always a smile on his face. My boy.”