The Hangman's Child (29 page)

Rann's heart missed a beat and Bragg chuckled.

'You got Mr Saward to thank for that, him having an arrangement there. Common box that don't belong to one client but the bank keeps oddments for whoever hands them in. Because any clerk might have to open it, it has to have a lock that any of the keys can fit. So if you was to get in, you'd be sure to open that one. Bit of a shake-up, was it?'

‘I
got no idea,' Rann said wearily.
‘I
never was there.'

Bragg sighed.

'Sunday night. Miss Joanne went there done up like a fourpenny hambone in black and veil. She'd need a bloody veil if she was caught freelancing on my board and lodging. She used to sneak there to give Mr Trent a romp before he got Mag Fashion. Last Sunday, Moonbeam was shadowing her. She never got an answer to Trent's bell but she hung around Cornhill, waiting for him perhaps. Moonbeam watched her, from down Leadenhall end. And you know what he saw, Handsome Rann? Later on a doxy comes out of Sun Court. Ain't Pretty Jo Phillips but remarkably like that randy little wriggler, Jolly, down the Shades, done up for arsey-farcey in tights and cloak. Then he sees Samuel. And you,

Handsome Rann. So don't bloody come it.'

'And you never thought your Moonbeam might be having you on?' Rann tried to sound as if he had not a care. 'You asked Miss Joanne, I s'pose.'

Bragg affected puzzlement.

'You know what, Jack? I never had a chance. She must've had a turn-up with her beau, Mr Trent. All events, her not getting an answer to the bell, she sort of despaired. Threw herself in the river. Body found.
Felo de se,
they reckon.'

'She wouldn't be the first of yours,' Rann said quietly.

Bragg lifted the corner of his lip from moist teeth in the same parody of a smile.

'You got hopes, Jack Rann! Not a mark on her! True, when she went freebooting with Trent those months back, she got a smacking. That's all.'

'Hardwicke thrashed her,' Rann said. He was watching carefully and saw that Bragg's eyes went still with a small shock. 'What you know about Hardwicke?'

'Hardwicke boasts to the world what goes on in this house, after a glass or two.' Rann spoke as if it was nothing to him. 'Hardwicke and Atwell. Drinking down the Three Tuns in Saffron Hill. Saying how photographs was taken and sold of him leathering Pretty Jo. Her being found dead now, p'raps it mightn't so easy
be
felo de se.
Not if the inquest was to see the pictures of him doing it. Still, if that was for working away from home, why d'you kill her now? Not for going to Trent. I'd say she must have known something that could hang you. What was it?'

It was too late. Bragg had regained his balance, his eyes cold but no longer dead. Looking at Rann, he called Moonbeam.

'Get the things out of his pockets.'

Rann put them on the table. Bragg drew the banknotes from the note-case. He turned to Moonbeam.

'Take the rest. Give him his snotter back. He'll want it to wipe up his tears.' He looked at Rann. 'Fancy you're a smart boy,

Handsome Jack? Brave boy? Hurting won't make you give away your fortune? Still, we shan't start with you. First you'll listen to Samuel and Mag Fashion. You brave enough to hear them on and on - and say nothing? Are you, Jack? If you are, when they've said all they'll ever say, we'll come asking you. And if you won't say a word, and if we really think you won't, for a start you won't have much need for a tongue, will you?'

They went out. A key turned and the bolts slid across. The room had been a maid's bedroom. A mattress lay on the floor near a small wooden table with a hairbrush and a hand-mirror. A single window was bolted into place and covered by vertical iron bars no more than six inches apart. Even the high window-lights of Newgate's death cell had seemed easier. The creak of a board assured him that the corridor of this informal prison was guarded with equal care.

Rann stretched his hand between the bars and tapped the window. The glass rang thick as wood. Even if he could break the leg off the little table, it would never shatter such panes. There was no fireplace, no attic flue for him to work his way up. His cleverness had brought him back where he had begun. But now he had given Samuel and Maggie as hostages, whose first cries would break his silence. Beyond the guarded door and barred window remained only a dwindling hope that Bragg knew nothing of Preedy's Rents nor the whereabouts of Miss Jolly.

28

In private-clothes, Verity turned into The Strand at the end of a blazing summer day. The wide pavements were afloat with crinolines, bonnets, muslin dresses, organdies and brilliantes. Young men, hands in the pockets of peg-top trousers, lounged at the counters of cigar divans. Others watched the passing crowds from doorways whose signboards offered shaving and hair-cutting.

Across the river, tenements on the southern shore sprawled along narrow streets. Authority had imposed a penny toll on Waterloo Bridge to deter Southwark from infesting The Strand. But the woman Verity wanted had crossed at dusk for thirty or forty years. She would appear as the white lamps came on, high on their swan's necks of cast-iron pillars, shining down the broad boulevard in a chain of pearls. 'Old Stock' would be there every night until she hid among the tenements to die.

The sky above Trafalgar Square turned from vermilion flame to plum-coloured twilight. He looked for her beyond the 'aristocracy' from clubs and night-houses, in silk hats and embroidered waistcoats. She would be among girls who paraded their stretches of pavement, twirling their parasols, holding up the train of skirts from the foul moisture condensing on the pavement in the cooler air of night.

Old Stock worked the little streets near the Adelphi, where the homeless slept under riverside arches. It was an enclave of painted
cheeks and brandy-sparkling eyes, the stench of bad tobacco, raucous horse-laughs and shrieked obscenities.

"ello, Ma!' he said at last.
‘I
hoped you might be waiting.'

Among the crinolines, she was conspicuous in a dirty cotton dress, her straw bonnet trimmed by faded ribbon. Grey hair and worn face, like the gin on her breath, marked her for what she was. Old Stock was employed to watch 'dress lodgers', girls dressed by their keepers to fetch high prices. She saw to it that her protegees did not run off to pawn the clothes or take men to rival houses.

'Mr Verity!' She gave him a faded smile. 'They give you Adelphi as a beat?'

'No, Mrs Stock, it's you I come to see. Hoping you might have something.'

The old woman grinned at him.

'I'm too cracky to have much for anyone now, sir. I watches that Miss Cat from the Wych Street house. She took three men back already. Almost caught a white choker that been psalm-singing at Exeter Hall, but he turned leery. Still, more 'n two pounds so far. Her being young, if a sour little bitch. I shall get a bit of it later. I don't do as well that way as I did. Still, I sweeps up too. They gives me grub for that. Very fair they is, to me.'

She was standing outside a gunsmith's shop, its small square panes displaying rifles with their grain polished to liquid perfection, brass and filigree, steel barrels sleek as satin.

'But you lost your best girl, Ma,' he said quietly. 'Your Joanne that worked with you a year back. Like a daughter she must have been after so long.'

The smile, and the energy, went from her face, like a player's mask. She nodded.

'They kept her indoors for special work lately. Now they say she wasn't right in the head. She never drowned herself, Mr Verity. I won't have it. Accident, p'raps. I'll go to the inquest down Shadwell Vestry. But what can I say and who'd listen? It's young Chaffey you want to see, that used to take Pretty Jo out a bit.'

'She had to do with Chaffey? Him that dresses for the surgeons down the Royal Free Hospital? I hoped as much.'

'He never had so much to do with her as he'd have liked, Mr Verity! She had to have five-shilling sweethearts. Chaffey's a larky young bloke, but often can't pay so much, 'cos he got no money. Never fortunate enough to pass his examinations to be a proper medical. But he helps at dressings and inquests.'

'Including Miss Joanne's?'

The old woman touched a handkerchief to the corner of her eye.

'I can't say it's square, sir. But the surgeon thinking otherwise, and Mr Fowler agreeing, I have to bite my tongue. But if Chaffey thinks it ain't square either, that's another thing. Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed? She wouldn't know the meaning.'

Verity's heart rose.

'P'raps, Mrs Stock, you'd do me the honour to take a glass o' summat hot and short with Chaffey, s'pose he was to be found. And supposing this little bit was for now.'

He drew a coin from his trouser-pocket and pressed it into her hand. At the pavement's edge, the brass lamps of a carriage cast tawny pools of oil-light on reddish tresses and the sharp line of Cat's young profile. Old Stock bared her gums in appreciation.

'I'll find you Mr Chaffey, sir, but I can't leave Cat. Thieving slut, and worse. She and Hoxton Liz had a barney last night. Nails and maulers. Consequence o' that, Miss Cat is going to wish she was wearing someone else's ears and backside when Ma Martileau reckons up the damage to Liz.'

She crossed the pavement and spoke to the girl. They set off, Verity and Old Stock together, Cat following several feet behind. In the streets by the river, an Irish fiddle in one bar competed for coppers with a mandolin across the alley.

The old woman looked round quickly and turned to a spacious public house near the steamer-landing of the Adelphi Stairs, its windows covered with white applique lettering for cigars, billiards, pyramid, and pool. Inside the Wine Promenade, the floor was carpeted. A bar of polished mahogany ran the full length of it, a stout woman and a tall man in a sailor's cap serving 'Mexico'. 'Crank', 'Sky Blue', and other combinations of gin. Old Stock spoke to the plump woman and led the way to a booth at the far end.

Chaffey sat at a drink-stained oak table, staring at the varnished pine of the partition in a distant reverie. He was a tall, pale young man with a dark love curl and black clothes. Old Stock looked about for the vixen-faced Cat, failed to see her, and said, 'Oh, bugger the slut!' She scratched herself, and sat down. Chaffey came out of his contemplation.

"ello, Ma! 'ello, Mr Verity!'

A waiter came to them.

'You'll take something, Mrs Stock?' Verity asked hastily. 'And Mr Chaffey?'

'Flare-Up, hot,' Ma Stock said firmly.

'Same as Ma,' Chaffey said. 'You come for me, Mr Verity?'

'Just information, Mr Chaffey. You got thoughts on the business of Miss Joanne?'

Chaffey looked quickly and reproachfully at Old Stock.

"
‘
s all right, sweetness,' the old woman said, 'I told Mr Verity my mind.'

Chaffey rubbed the side of his face as an aid to thought. 'I was her friend,' he said pathetically. 'They got no right to make her out a suicide, Mr Verity.' Verity's face glowed encouragingly.
‘I
wouldn't argue 'gainst that, Mr Chaffey.' Chaffey leant forward confidentially. 'What you want to know, Mr Verity?'

Verity watched the waiter set down gin and a jug of hot water. 'First off, Mr Chaffey, there was her boots.' Chaffey stared at him over the steamy brim of a glass. 'What about her boots?'

'I was there soon after they found her, Mr Chaffey. She hadn't got her boots.'

Chaffey continued to stare at him with the apologetic look of one who has missed the point.

'Mr Chaffey,' said Verity generously, 'take a young gentleman of your considerable medical experience. You ever hear of a young person found drowned that had lost her boots?'

'They don't necessary wear boots, Mr V

Verity shook his head with a tolerant smile.

'I know that, Mr Chaffey. What I asked was, had you ever known an unfortunate found drowned that had lost her boots? Started with 'em, finished without 'em? Or a well-dressed young person, like Miss Joanne, that took her boots off special before walking to the river to throw herself in?'

Chaffey looked at him more intently.

'If she'd walked barefoot, Mr Verity, there'd be marks on the feet, which no one says there was. But a body that's drowned don't lose its boots, sir. First thing that swells is the feet. Boots fit tighter in the water. Most times, you have to cut the boots off. Any case, whatever a body's wearing leaves a red impression. Boots most of all. If the boots was lost, you'd still see where they'd been.'

'She had no mark of boots. I saw that for myself.'

Chaffey was mystified, brow furrowed, eye bright with a tear.