The Hangman's Child (15 page)

"Course I bloody wouldn't,' Samuel replied in a whisper. 'Not till I wanted cash. Why should I?'

'And seeing as you found it genuine when you bought it, you wouldn't keep smelling it and looking through a glass to see if the paper had gone yellow. You'd have done that at the start, wouldn't you?'

'You got the Devil's own nerve, Jack Rann!' Samuel said suddenly, with a laugh of pure delight.

'Exactly, Sammy. When this job is done, the bills I send to the bank for cashing will be genuine as the roast beef of old England. What's lying in vaults and deed-boxes will be the copies I leave there. They're the ones that'll have to explain to the banks.'

Samuel chuckled at the neatness of it. Rann lowered his voice.

There's some can copy a hand, like Miss Jolly, or fake a bill. When they've done it, yellow spot or the smell of chlorine trips them. But there's not a bank or crib in London I can't open, with the hangman behind me. And if genuine bills are taken and copies left, it gives a new look to the whole business. Don't it? I got more than fifty blank bills, that was Saward's. Those I'll leave behind, with Jolly's hand on 'em, and come out with others taken in their place. Every one would pass the Scrutiny Committee of the Bank of England, just because they're genuine.'

Samuel looked at him, wanting to believe. Rann pressed on.

True as sterling silver or twenty-four carat gold. As many as possible payable to bearer and can't be refused cash when presented. That's what me and Pandy meant to have. Enough to keep a man for life. And that's what I must have now.'

Samuel glanced at the waxwork Robin Hood and then away again.

Trouble is, Jack, the minute you've stole those bills, someone might take one of your fakes to change it. But you won't know. Every time you try to change a bill, you might be second in the race. You come
in second, there's an end of you
.'

Rann smiled.

'I'm not going near a bank, Sammy' 'And you think I am?'

'Sam, neither of us goes near a bank once this is over. And only you before the job's done. And you won't ask the bank for money, so there's no crime. At the first bank, you're old Canon Wilberforce that's taking a share in a joint-stock company. At the second, you're a silver-haired bishop from New Zealand that's dad of Miss Mag Fashion and must raise the wind for a marriage settlement. Third, you're attorney and guardian to rich Orphan Jolly and must consolidate funds in a wardship suit. That's all. In each case you arrange to send bills to be cashed into Bank of England bonds, that can be taken elsewhere and changed for coin. And you're never seen again. Messengers take them to the bank for you. Easy as buying a pound of cheese.'

"What when it's the same bill a second time and there's a stink?'

P
andy and me thought of that. If there's a stink, you won't be there to smell it, nor shall I. Any case, bills run three months and we'll have those with longest to go. The duds'll be traded on between holders for weeks or months, not cashed.'

Samuel's eyes were on the waxwork figures, as if something else was worrying him.

'How'll you live till this comes off, Jack?'

'The girl's room. Off Haymarket. Bragg thinks she's lodging in Shoreditch with Mag Fashion in a two-pair back. On'y he don't know quite where!'

Samuel smiled. Then he asked, 'Exactly where's the vault, Jack?'

Rann shook his head.

'The fewer that know, Sammy, the fewer can tell.' 'If I don't know what I'm in for, Jack, I'm out of this.' Rann sighed and looked round carefully at the other benches. 'In Cornhill, Sam.'

It took a moment for Samuel to respond. 'Cornhill? Walker's Vaults, opposite Trent's Mourning?' 'That's it,' said Rann quietly.

'You seen the steel vault-door you'll have to bust before you set eyes on the safe deposits? You seen the building you'll have to get into before you even see that steel door?'

'I seen all that, Sam. A dozen times. And if I ain't the man to get in, how am I sitting here, not lying in a shroud six feet down in quicklime by Newgate wall?'

But Samuel shifted with dismay on the wooden bench.

'Anyone walking down Cornhill can see that vault door day and night, Jack. Two spy-holes through the steel shutters and gas always burning. Policeman looks in every twenty minutes. It's why Walkers say they're safer than the Bank of England.'

'They do, Sammy. They do say that.'

'You'd be on show every second, Jack. Vault door with mirrors all round to show anyone near it. You'd need hours at a lock like that. Even you can't make yourself invisible.'

'Not all the time, Sammy. But I think I could be invisible if I had to be. For a little while. Same as no one saw me leave them death-wards. Mag Fashion got word from a jack that's stiff for her. They still don't know how I got out. Think Lupus or Jessup forgot to lock the cell door. Reckon I got out through the chapel gallery, disguised as a woman with clothes that Hawkins or Sue Berry left hid there on a Sunday.'

'Cornhill Vaults could hang you yet,' said Samuel glumly. 'First off, you'll have to crack them twice. Until you do it first, you won't have genuine bank-bills for your little shop-mouse to copy the details on your blanks. You'd have to wait for her to do the penning. Then you must take the copies back and leave them. It's not on, Jack. You might crack a crib, but even you can't do Walker's Vaults twice before it's noticed. No one could. This ain't a china pig, it's iron and steel. They'd tumble to it first time. If you have to snoop for a second chance, you'll be seen, took back to Newgate and stretched before you know it.'

Rann whispered to him, 'I'm going in once, Sam. They'll be copied in there. In the vault. No other way.'

Samuel shook his head.

'Not you, Jack Rann. You're not a faker! Hardly sign your own name.'

'No, Sam, but Jolly is. Me and Pandy decided it was the only way. When I crack that vault, she's coming with me.'

Samuel stared at the mechanical waxworks, as if trying to calculate whether this made the scheme better or worse.

'And as for a shop-mouse,' Rann continued bitterly, 'when she was a child in the slop-trade, she must get every stitch and seam neat and exact. Starved and whipped when not so. But them that treated her so cruel gave her the best training for nimble fingers to fake a bill or a name. See it on those papers. Neat and true as fancy lace.'

Soapy Samuel fingered his clergyman's tie again and gestured at the stage with his other hand. He said in a whisper, 'Suffering God, Jack! They're bloody real, not waxworks. Seen the eyes blink. Seen 'em breathe! They're watching us!'

'What if they are?' said Rann irritably. 'They come from America. They got no cause to be interested in us.'

Samuel got to his feet.

‘I
don't care. I ain't going to be watched. I'm off.' 'They'll remember you all the better running off with a face like a poisoned cat!'

As Samuel came to the end of the bench, his way was blocked by a well-dressed woman, two curly-headed girls clutching at her skirts. She had just come in and was putting her purse away. Samuel inclined his head and raised his hat, his face a smiling moon. The woman smiled back. Samuel ruffled the curly heads. Rann heard the unctuous clerical tone. 'Little angels of the Lord
....
So pretty ... so blessed
....
Would that all little children, all little heavenly lambs might be
....'
He had found a card in his notecase and was pressing it into her hand.

Rann looked away, exasperated, until Samuel and the woman parted. Then he got up and walked outside. The clerical impostor was staring thirstily into his palm.

'Two sovs and a chinker,' he said, more cheerfully than he had said anything that afternoon. 'But the best of it is, Jack, she feels happier this minute than we shall ever know. Warm inside and good as gold. She don't miss a quid or two. Folks like her never give what they'd really miss. So where's the harm in all that, Handsome Rann? Eh?'

THREE
PLAIN DUTIES

14

'God knows,' Verity said glumly,
‘I
couldn't a-made a worse mess. I may choke to say it, Mr Stringfellow, but Mr Croaker give me what I deserved. And that brute Fowler, I can't help seeing he's right. About the smuggling at least. That's what riles me most. I must've wiped out months of work. How could I be so stoopid?'

Julius Stringfellow, cabman of Sovereign Street, Paddington Green, shook his head, picking at a gap in his teeth with his forefinger. The suction applied to a scrap of ham and egg seemed a comment on his son-in-law's imprudence.

'Your trouble, me old sojer, is taking no account of superior numbers. Superior numbers has all the time in the world to lay a snare. And that's what they did. Good and proper.'

Stringfellow was dressed in an old green coat, brown breeches, and billicock hat. As usual after supper, he sat among the remains of broiled bones, ham, and eggs at the kitchen table, his glass of porter half-finished. He was poking at the crevices of a harness brass with a well-used handkerchief. An odour of hot straw and horse-hide ebbed and flowed about the latch of the kitchen door.

Verity looked up from the toecap of a new boot, whose pimples he was smoothing with a hot iron, so that it might be polished to the brilliance of black glass.

'Bragg and his lot watched me all that night. Fowler too. Watched until they saw a chance with that young person. If old

Tollis, the lighterman, hadn't been on his barge and sung in tune, I'd be in Horsemonger Lane Gaol now for attempted ravishing of Lambeth Sue, let alone grievous bodily on two of Bragg's prizemen.'

Stringfellow got to his feet, supported on one side by the wooden leg which had served him since the loss of his own at the siege of Bhurtpore almost thirty years earlier. Verity frowned, the tip of the iron close to the stitching. To touch the cobbler's thread would burn it through and cause the entire toecap to fall off.

'Well, you ain't in Horsemonger Lane Lock-Up,' said Stringfellow bracingly. 'Reduced to plain duties you may be, but you got no cause to blub until you're hurt worse than this. A man's been with the Rifle Brigade at Inkerman and the Redan knows better - or should do. Never call retreat - ain't that what they say?'

'Yes,' said Verity sadly, 'I 'spect they do.'

The old cabman lifted the door latch.

'On warm nights like this,' said Verity quietly, 'it wouldn't come amiss if you was to stand the old horse a bit further off.'

The atmosphere in the mews cottage in Sovereign Street was depressed. Stringfellow ambled off to attend to Lightning, the elderly cab-horse with its bony flanks and patient manner. He could be heard whistling softly to it as he plied the sponge and bucket.

Verity picked up the second boot and studied it. He put it down as the latch at the bottom of the staircase clinked and the cottage door opened. Bella Verity, daughter of Cabman Stringfellow, slipped past her husband, sat down in the low nursing-chair and picked up her small blue work-basket. Despite her plumpness and fair curls, she seemed a diminutive partner, her prettiness illuminated by her habit of smiling to herself while she worked, as if at some secret happiness.

'Care killed a cat, Mr Verity,' she said presently.

'So it might, Mrs Verity,' - he studied the next toe-cap again -'but Mr Inspector Croaker is more likely to be the death o' me!'

She looked up at him, her face drawn in a parody of anxiety.

'But it don't matter, Mr Verity! Even if you got to spend the rest o' your life on sentry-go outside the houses of quality, keeping nuisance away. Think what we got! We got little Billy and Vicky; we got food on the table; clothes to our backs. There's poor soul-s'd think us rich! You got Paddington Chapel on Sundays. They think the world of you down there.'

'Wait till this gets out,' he said bleakly. 'No one's going to think the world of me then.'

'But I will,' she said quietly, 'and I know Pa will. I will, Mr Verity, always and always.'

She came behind his chair and put her arms round him.

'Never say die,' she said gently. 'If Mr Fowler done wrong and Mr Bragg's a brute, they'll answer for it soon enough.'

‘I
hope so, Mrs Verity - Bella.'

'You was brought up to know it's true!' she said reprovingly. 'You was taught it every Sunday.'

Verity sighed and patted the hand that lay on his lapel. He nodded.

'And I mean to go on. I'll find them houses where Soapy Samuel went. I'll see what happened there. Mr Croaker can't stop me doing that. I'll see about that knife Flash Fowler says he found down Saffron Hill. But I'll be doing it alone.'