The Detective Wore Silk Drawers (3 page)

Jowett was shaking his head. “I don’t see how this can be true, Sergeant. Prize fighting was carried on illegally a dozen years ago, as it had been for a century or more. But it was stopped by rigid enforcement and has not been heard of since. It no longer commanded respect as a sport. You remember the ugly incidents, I expect. The fight between Sayers and that American—”

“Heenan, sir. The Benicia Boy.”

“Yes. It put pugilism in very bad odour. There was a damned regrettable episode at Fenchurch Street Station, too, when there was a brawl in the early hours of the morning.”

“The second Mace–King fight,” Cribb confirmed. “End of 1862. The fault lay with the South Western Railway Company that night. If they’d laid on sufficient trains in the first place, the roughs would never have set about the ticket holders.”

“I recall that it led to a good deal of criticism of the police,” said Jowett. “Our point was, if I remember, that everyone present was engaged in an illegal activity so we bore no responsibility for those who were robbed and beaten, poor beggars.”

“That was it, sir. Even Jem Mace was struck. Bob Travers held the roughs off by using knuckle dusters. Bill Richardson laid about them with the butt end of a billiard cue.”

“You seem to have a vivid memory of the occasion, Sergeant.”

Cribb cleared his throat. “Newspapers were full of it, sir.”

“Quite so. But really, Sergeant, I cannot say that I have heard much of prize fighting since. A law was passed banning the special trains, I believe.”

“Regulation of Railways Act, 1868, sir,” barked Cribb.“Section twenty-one. Imposed penalties of up to five hundred pounds.”

“Precisely.”

“Ah, but what goes on now doesn’t involve trains. And it’s all kept very close.”

“So you really think your corpse died in the prize ring?”

“Can’t say for certain, sir. He was a pug, though. And he had a fight shortly before his death.”

“How do you know?”

“Pattern of bruising, sir. State of his knuckles.”

“Really? You seem to be quite an authority. Isn’t yours a famous pugilistic name, now that I think of it?”

Cribb grinned tolerantly. “Tom the Great? No connection, I’m sorry to admit. Ever seen his monument in Woolwich Old Church graveyard, sir? Sculptured from a twenty-ton block of Portland stone. You can see it from the Thames. Been some first-class men with the name of Cribb, sir, but only one has been commemorated on that scale.”

“Stop looking so damned wistful, Sergeant. Now, what’s your business? I haven’t time to discuss prize fighting or your family.”

None the less his mood was more relaxed. If Jowett might be persuaded to concede anything, now was the moment.

Cribb spoke in earnest.

“I need to learn what’s happening among the prizefighting fraternity. I must get among them. Gain their confidence.”

“You need to be released from other duties for a time, you mean?”

“Certainly sir, but it’s more than that. Fist fighting’s illegal. Always was. I may need to stand by while it goes on. Even appear to enjoy it.” As alarm coursed across the Inspector’s face, Cribb added, “French methods, you might say, sir.”

There was a significant pause.

“Can you really assure me that this is a necessary subterfuge, Sergeant?”

“Fundamental to my investigation, sir. Of course, if it’s too unorthodox . . .”

“Not at all—”

“Very good, sir. I presume, then, that Constable Thackeray can accompany me.”

Jowett blinked, scarcely aware that the decision was made. “I—that is—yes.”

“Thank you, sir. We shan’t actively encourage the pugs, I promise you.”

Jowett’s jaw jolted. “Indeed no! So far as this investigation is concerned, Sergeant, you must be meticulously cautious. Do nothing that smacks of conspiracy. That may be difficult in the circumstances, but you must abide by it. And I think it advisable, Sergeant, that you act without further reference to me in this case. You understand that if any of the divisional inspectors heard that one of my detectives had concealed information about illegal prize fighting, for whatever reason, it might lead to a calamitous situation between this office and the divisions.”

“Ruinous, sir,” agreed Cribb breezily.

Three minutes later he was striding in the sunshine along Whitehall. Jowett, alone at his desk, was obsessively drawing at his pipe.

CHAPTER

3

“IT’S BEEN THE SAME EVERYWHERE, SARGE. YOU MENTION fist fighting, and they start. I’ve heard it all six times over this afternoon, from Gentleman Jackson to Jem Mace. Ropes and stakes, first bloods and knockdowns, fibbings and cross-buttocks until it fair turned my stomach. They all talk about the golden days with tears in their eyes until the ale runs out. But ask ’em where you might see a fist fight nowadays and they look at you as if you was asking to meet Prince Albert, rest his soul.”

“You tried them all, then?”

“Except the
Referee
man. He was sacked six months ago because there wasn’t enough scrapping of the gloved variety to keep him busy. They’re all worried about their jobs, if you ask me.”

“Common complaint,” Cribb observed, thinking of Scotland Yard. “Did you ask what happened to the promoters and backers? They can’t all have vanished.”

“Seems they turned to other sports, Sarge. The turf, or pedestrianism. There ain’t the money in glove fighting.”

They paced the Victoria Embankment, watching the river traffic. It was too warm to be indoors. Thackeray needed air, anyway, after his spell on duty in the bars of Fleet Street. Ahead of them two small boys chased metal hoops. The glittering Thames seemed totally innocent of anything so unpoetic as a headless corpse.

“Jago,” said Cribb.

“What’s that, Sarge?”

“Henry Jago. He’s the young cove to see. Should have thought of it before.”

“Another newspaperman?” inquired Thackeray.

“Someone much more useful. A constable. Young fellow attached to the Yard. Come on, Thackeray. If we’re in luck, he may be off duty.”

Cribb set off at a brisk pace towards Northumberland Avenue. Thackeray, reacting less quickly, followed a few paces behind and toppled a straying hoop in his efforts to close with the Sergeant.

“Fungus face!” bawled the owner.

At Palace Place, Great Scotland Yard, Cribb marched up to the building known in the Department as “single men’s quarters.” P. C. Jago had a room on the second floor, and they noisily mounted an uncarpeted staircase.

“This Jago,” queried Thackeray, rather short of breath.

“Yes?”

“Has he made a study of prize fighting?”

“Better than that,” said Cribb. “He’s a first-class boxer.”

They stood by a door on the second-floor landing. It was dark indoors after the July sunshine. Thackeray peered closely at a small white rectangle mounted in brass on the door.

“Blimey, Sarge. A visiting card! ‘Henry Jago. Constable, Metropolitan Police.’ Can you credit that? First time I’ve seen such a thing in nearly thirty years in the force! Why, I don’t suppose even Inspector Jowett’s got one. ‘Constable, Metropolitan Police’!”

Cribb sniffed. “Keep your voice down. Don’t want to give him offence. Jago’s from a high-class family. Private tutor and public school. Should have gone to University. Certainly had the money for it. There was some sort of family quarrel, though.

Young Jago walked out in protest and joined the force.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Thackeray, who had never encountered such a well-connected constable.

“Hope he’s in.” Cribb knocked.

Nothing.

A second knock.

Sounds from inside.

A pause.

The door opened a few inches and Constable Jago’s eyes appeared through the gap.

“What the—Sergeant Cribb! Come in, gentlemen.”

The door swung inwards and revealed a figure in a striped cotton nightshirt.

“You must excuse me. Working at nights, you understand. Do find yourselves a chair. You’ll think me most uncivil, but I cannot offer you a drink. I try to avoid all intoxicants, and I can’t endure the torment of keeping them for guests. Perhaps an orange?”

The visitors declined and waited while Jago drew back the curtains and straightened the bed he had just left. Sturdily built and in his early twenties, he moved about with remarkable agility for one who had been slumbering two minutes before.

He left the room to wash. Thackeray got up to examine the mantelshelf. “Blondin poised on his wire above Niagara,” a well-thumbed postcard in a picture frame, held the position of honour between two pewter boxing trophies. An antique chiming clock had been moved aside and crowned with soiled collars.

Thackeray crossed the room to a bookcase stacked with piles of sporting newspapers weighted down by odd dumbbells and the two standard volumes on criminal law. What caught his eye, resting on top, was a half-filled decanter.

“I thought he said he didn’t keep liquor.”

“What is it?” asked Cribb.

Thackeray removed the glass stopper and took a deep, speculative sniff. He instantly regretted doing so.

“Elliman’s,” announced Cribb. “Can smell it from here. Embrocation. Splendid for toning the muscles. Not recommended by the glass.”

Thackeray produced a large handkerchief and cleared his nostrils. He joined Cribb on the sofa just as Jago re-entered, now presentable in shirt and regulation trousers.

“We haven’t cut into your sleep too much, I hope?”inquired Cribb in a whim of compassion.

“Not at all, Sergeant. I’m due to report at five.”

“Good. You keep up the sporting interest, I see.”

“Yes, in my spells off duty.” Jago’s accent was impeccable.

“Handsome portrait, that.” Cribb was looking at a large framed engraving of Captain Matthew Webb that hung above the bed.

“A great man, Sergeant.”

“Yes, indeed. Headed in the right direction, too.”

Both constables were baffled by Cribb’s remark.

“Dover to Calais. France, you see. The modern man goes to France for fresh ideas, or so I’m told. Remember that when you next meet Inspector Jowett. How’s the boxing, Jago?”

“Oh, I try to keep up with it, Sergeant, but they keep me busy here.”

“Let’s see. You won a medal at the police tournament last winter, and damned near collected a Queensberry Cup as well, didn’t you?”

“Some did say I was unlucky to lose the middleweight title, Sergeant.”

“So I heard. Where d’you train?”

A look of concern came into Jago’s eyes.

“Here mostly, Sergeant. I’ve got the dumbbells, you see, and a chest expander—”

“Sparring they call it, don’t they?” broke in Cribb. “Practising with other boxers. Where d’you do it?”

“I . . .” He clenched his hands in front of him and regarded them uneasily. Police Regulation 3 seemed written across them.
Members of the force are ordered at all times to lead
an orderly private life and keep respectable company.

“This isn’t trouble,” Cribb reassured him. “I need your help. If you know any of the fist-fighting fraternity, you may help me find a killer. Where do you go to train?”

Jago replaced his hands in his pockets.

“There’s a public house near Covent Garden, Sergeant. The Anchor. It has a large room attached to it. The landlord had it fitted out as a gym. Most of the boxing men in London know it.”

“Fist fighters?”

Jago gulped. “Good heavens, no! It’s strictly a glove-fighting establishment—not exactly the Athenaeum, you understand, but there are certain limitations on the membership. Some of the attendants may be ex-pugilists, from what I’ve heard, but I don’t actually associate with them.”

“Really?” Breeding will out, thought Cribb wryly. “Ever heard talk of prize fighting going on these days?”

“Yes. There are those who hint at it. A whisper goes round that there’s sport to be had in some quiet corner of Kent or Essex, and a party’s got up to make an excursion. It’s not partridge or pheasant those characters go to find, Sergeant. But I think it prudent to close my ears to such talk.”

“You’ve heard nothing of the fights themselves. No names?”

“No, but if I showed interest—”

“Do they know you’re in the force?”

Jago gave thought to the question. His thinking processes were markedly less agile than Cribb’s.

“I don’t arrive in my uniform, and I most certainly avoid conversation about my duties. It’s possible that someone has heard of my matches in the police tournament, but I rather doubt that. They don’t treat me with the suspicion that one customarily encounters.”

“Good. When are you next going to the Anchor?”

“Tomorrow at lunchtime was the next training session I planned. There are usually several sparring partners available around noon. I limber for thirty minutes or so, and then have half a dozen rounds with whoever is there. A most interesting assortment of men find their way there. Military officers, undergraduates, members of the Stock Exchange—”

“You know their professions,” Cribb rapped out. “What’s to prevent them from knowing yours?”

“I keep it to myself, Sergeant. If they ask, I say I’m engaged in clerical work at Whitehall. Which I am, more’s the pity.”

Cribb was satisfied. He had harboured reservations about Jago’s ability to carry out detective work.

“Very well. If you want action, I can arrange it. From tomorrow onwards you’ll be working for me, and your duties will start at the Anchor. I need information about prize fighting and you’re the man to seek it out—names, places, times. Handle this carefully. Listen, rather than interrogate, but don’t be reluctant to show interest. Are you game?”

Henry Jago was game, and Sergeant Cribb left at once to arrange his transfer to M Division.

¦ To a field on the Moat Farm, a mile north of Rainham on the Southend Road, came three strangers. They carried a length of rope looped around the shoulders of the tallest, a bundle of stakes and a mallet. After agitated discussion and pointing of hands, they approached a patch of ground more even than the rest. Watched by a trio of interested sheep, they paced the shape of a square in earnest concentration. Four of the stakes were distributed at the corners and one was driven securely into the earth. The rope was attached to it, and payed out to a length of about eight yards, previously marked on the rope with white paint. The position for the second stake was measured and marked, but it was not fixed in the ground. Nor were the other two, although their points were used to make shallow holes in the turf. When this surveying exercise was complete, the men carried stakes, ropes and mallet to the hedge bordering the field and secreted them in the longer grass there. Their business completed, they returned towards Rainham.

¦ Two full days passed. Thackeray was sent to ask questions of the clientele in a list of public houses famous for their boxing promotions, from the Swan at Upper Clapton to the Marquis of Granby at Lambeth. All he learned was the Queensberry Rules and the potency of wines in wood. Jago sparred at the Anchor gymnasium until his ribs ached, and talked into the small hours with the trainers there. He learned the roll of champions from Figg to Mace. Sergeant Cribb attended an inquest on the headless pugilist and learned that he died from causes unknown. “The medical witnesses have not established indisputably that this unfortunate man died as the result of his beheading,” the coroner had said. “True, the post-mortem revealed no other cause of death, but until and unless the head of this corpse can be located, the post-mortem is not conclusive.”

The news of a prize fight arranged for Friday evening at a venue in Essex finally came not from one of Jago’s trainers, but from the stationmaster at Fenchurch Street.

“He frequents the gym at lunchtimes to practise lifting weights,” Jago explained to Cribb. “I believe he’s endeavouring to reduce his waistline. I scarcely know the fellow, but he overheard me asking somebody whether pugilism could ever be revived—an indirect method of inquiry, you see, Sergeant—and he quite openly told me that he knew of a fight this coming Friday night. He says that he can tell by the advance purchase of railway tickets. I inquired how he knew that it was not a gloved contest, and he told me that the day one of the fancy endures a train journey to, pardon the expression, see a bloody waltz with muffs on hasn’t come yet, and in his opinion never would.”

So Cribb and his two assistants waited stolidly in rich Essex mud surrounding the freshly erected ring at the Moat Farm. The conditions were not ideal for outdoor sport.

Rain had spotted the windows when the train reached Barking. At Rainham when they disembarked there was a deluge. It lessened in intensity as the three hundred pilgrims paddled along a lane running with water. Twenty minutes later when they reached the ring, there was a soft but insistent drizzle.

“Regulation boots! They let the water in like ruddy sluice gates,” Thackeray complained to Jago.

“Should have come prepared, like me,” Cribb intervened. “Never visit the country without galoshes and a waterproof. Antipluvium, this one. Excellent value. Hello! There’s action at last.”

Thackeray was distracted from his sodden feet by a commotion at one of the corners. A cap was tossed into the ring. A large figure ducked between the ropes. A hulk, far larger than Cribb’s headless corpse, retrieved the cap. Cheers from a few supporters. The response: a generous deposit of spittle where the cap had lain.

“Meanix!” announced several who knew. “The Stepney Ox!”

To murmurs of awe Mr. Meanix toured the ring, scowling at the patrons, and finally returned to his corner and produced a scarlet square of silk from his pocket. This he looped around one of the stakes. A supporter wrapped an overcoat around his shoulders. He shrugged it off and it dropped to the mud at his feet. It was humbly retrieved from under the lower rope. Meanix waited, statuesque, skin gleaming with moisture, trying to seem oblivious to the din around him.

“Ever seen him at the Anchor?” Cribb asked Jago.

“Good gracious, no, Sergeant. He’s not the class of man we encourage.”

There was no indication anywhere of an opponent for the Ox. Bookies snaking among the crowd were already taking bets freely, regardless that no one seemed sure who would be the second pugilist. There were copious suggestions, ranging from names well known in the amateur ring to former champions whose age would give them scant chance against Meanix.

“How does a man like that keep in trim?” Thackeray inquired. “If the Anchor wouldn’t admit him, where could he take his breathings?”