The Hangman's Child (32 page)

Samson slid off his stool, chortled, and reached for his hat.

'And me paired on the beat with a Methodist?'

Verity sanded an ink-blot and closed the ledger.

'Methodists are human, Mr Samson. Sinners like the rest.'

Samson now suspected a trap.

'You got something special in mind, have you?'

Verity shrugged.

'I was only wondering, Mr Samson, supposing I could square it when I come to my diary, if you mightn't fancy an evening at the Chinese Shades. Company of a young person.'

Samson chortled again.

'I got to see this, my son. A Methodist in an 'ouse of sin.'

'You got no idea, Mr Samson, how much time gets took up for a Methodist by sin. All this depending on favour-for-favour.' 'Such as what favour?'

From his breast-pocket, Verity drew an envelope.

'You'd favour me by keeping this for a week or two, as a man of confidence. If I was to get coopered in that time, or go missing without cause, you'd hand this unopened to Mr Croaker. If he shouldn't want it, then to Superintendent Gowry.'

Samson grinned, accepted the envelope, and slid it into his pocket.

'You don't half take the cake, my son!'

Like down-at-heel clerks in their tall hats and frock coats, they joined the Monmouth Street crowd, pushing towards the penny gaff. The success of the Chinese Shades had brought such numbers that a uniformed policeman now kept order in the narrow street. A farmhouse kitchen-table on the pavement supported a band of flute, violin, and drum. The light streaming out as the curtain was pulled aside lit the faces of the crowd like a reflection of fire.

The Chinese Shades now occupied most of the performance. There was a comic shadow-play, a patient on a surgeon's table. The victim was opened with a pair of large shears. An assortment of objects was extracted from his entrails: an alarm clock which rang upon removal, a string of sausages, a live rabbit, a rolling-pin, a kettle, and an umbrella. Several times he sat up, to be laid out again with the blow of an iron saucepan to his head. Finally, the surgeon's incision was sewn up with a monstrous needle and thick cord.

The restless amusement ended and there was silence as the broken piano rang out its suggestion of eastern dance.

'Round the back, Mr Samson! Make sure she don't do a bunk through the alley'

'See the turn first,' Samson said amiably.

'There ain't going to be a turn. You'll see all there is to see in the alley. Get there and hold her if she tries to slip out.'

He stood up and moved in the shadows towards the roughly constructed stage, leaving Samson to hurry to the alleyway. Behind the calico screens, fierce gaslight shone full on the stretched fabric, casting the girl's shadow. Verity moved behind the lights, where she could scarcely see him. He gave Samson a counted minute. Then he reached for the gas-tap and turned it. The brilliance spluttered into fading twilight, a last glow of red-hot mantels, and darkness.

The audience began to shout its disapproval. A party of costers set up a slow handclap. But Verity knew what Miss Jolly must do. Only one door led behind the stage and she would bolt for it. He was there, seizing an upper arm whose texture might equally have been silk fleshing or cool skin.

'Right, miss!' he said. 'You an' me needs to have a word.'

She let out a wail of terror, more intense than he could account for. Twisting for her life, she broke free and fled, apparently naked, for the alley door. Hearing the cry, Samson opened it from the other side. They were in the passageway of the old warehouse, Verity at one end, Samson at the other, Miss Jolly in the middle.

'Ain't you got more sense?' Samson asked with a smile. 'You can't go out there like that!'

'She might, Mr Samson. Supposing she was in fear of someone that could do worse things to her than the law ever would.'

The tumult among the audience died as Dandy O'Hara appeared with a coster favourite, 'My Long-Tailed Jock'. A large man opened the door between the stage and the passageway. He saw the two policemen with his dancing-girl and quickly withdrew. Miss Jolly dodged towards the dressing cubicle where she had left her clothes. She cried out as Samson followed. Verity motioned him back.

'Now, you listen, my girl,' he said firmly, standing over her, 'we got no quarrel with you, nor what you been doing here. But Jack Rann's another matter. You being his sweetheart.'

'No!' she cried, folding her arms crosswise to cover herself. 'Never!'

'Don't come it,' Samson said, stil
l grinning at her. 'You was his
doxy long ago. You'd know where he was, if anyone did!' 'I don't!'

She snatched a bundle of linen to herself. Verity let out a sigh of impatience.

'We ain't here to hang Jack Rann, but we might save him.' The look that slanted from her dark eyes made it impossible to tell whether she believed him. 'Save him?'

They faced each other over a distance of three feet.

'Handsome Rann never coopered Pandy Quinn,' Verity said gently. 'He couldn't have done. I know that now.'

Samson looked at him in dismay.

'Draw it mild, my son,' he said quickly.

Verity ignored him and held Miss Jolly's gaze.

The knife Mr Fowler found in Saffron Hill never came from the Golden Anchor. Drains don't run that way.'

The tight-lidded eyes flicked from Verity to Samson, choosing which to believe.

'And the blood,' Verity said patiently. 'All the blood Jack Rann had on him never come from Pandy Quinn. Might be from another man, or a stuck pig, or a blood pudding. Quinn being cut with a stiletto hardly bled at all. Only way he might bleed was being carried rough from somewhere else. In that case he wasn't cut in the tap-room. And in that case Jack Rann never did it. The taproom was the only room your Jack was in.'

'Then who?' she wailed.

'Same men as held Pretty Jo's head under water until she died, then left her on Wapping Reach like a found-drowned.' 'But why?' She sat down on a stool in her cubicle. 'Once we find Jack Rann, we'll know. Where is he?' 'He's gone!' 'Where?'

'I don't know!' The eyes went round and the mouth opened in a tragic gape.

"Course you bloody know!' Samson said irritably. Verity frowned again and waved him to silence.

'Your Handsome Jack got more danger of being done to death by the men who fitted him to Pandy's murder than he ever has of being hanged by Jack Ketch. Don't you know that?'

The first tear brimmed and she nodded silently.

'Right,' said Verity gently, 'you gotta be a good, brave, girl, and help us find him before he's hurt as bad as Pandy Quinn.'

'He'll be took to Newgate and hanged!'

'He won't!' said Verity encouragingly. 'There's evidence to show he never cut Pandy. Any case, wouldn't it be better for him to be in Newgate, with a chance to get a pardon, than in the hands of the villains that's never pardoned anyone?'

She shook her head.

'He's been took by them,' Verity insisted. 'Ain't that what all this is about?'

Miss Jolly stared at the floor beyond her toes.

'Leave him where he is, miss, and he'll die surely as warrant morning at Newgate. Can't you see? You been beaten, hurt, by men of that sort. You know what they can do. If Handsome Jack was free now, don't you think you'd hear?'

She stared with frightened eyes at the same patch of floor.

'Bully Bragg and the others,' Verity added quietly, 'ain't it? The men that held him down on Pandy Quinn.'

She nodded again.

'And Policeman Fowler?' Verity held his breath.

Samson looked aghast and Miss Jolly lifted her face, more frightened than ever.

'Bully Bragg anyway,' Verity said reassuringly. 'Where?'

Miss Jolly put her hands together.

'You'll hang him!' she cried at them.

Samson's face hardened behind the ginger whiskers.

'Hang you, more like! Make Jack Ketch quite frisky. If there's murder and you let it happen, you're an accessory. If you're lucky you'll be hanged; if you ain't, you'll be caught by those that had Pretty Jo, fighting to breathe with your head held under water till you can't breathe no more.'

Verity glared at him but Samson's warning did its work.

'Red-Haired Brigid!' she sobbed, 'that does the Smithfield gaff. I couldn't go where they know me, but Brigid dressed smart in a veil not to be noticed and walked round Bragg's houses. At Martileau's, they had someone in the top rooms working a mirror in the sun. Might be a girl locked up. But it might be him.'

Verity straightened up, hands behind his back under the tails of his frock coat. Victory had come easily. He saw himself before Superintendent Gowry's desk in a few days, receiving congratulations on the arrest of Bragg, the unmasking of Fowler, the discovery of Jack Rann's innocence.

'There's a good, brave, sensible girl,' he said gently. 'You get your proper clothes on. We'll save your Handsome Jack.'

Half an hour later, with Samson escorting Miss Jolly, Verity entered the courtyard off Drury Lane, the soot-grained buildings of a century past towering on every side. Mother Martileau's had been familiar territory to him long before it came under the rule of Bully Bragg. He had arrested a score of its inmates at various times for pilfering the notecases and pockets of their clients, inflicting bodily harm on one another, receiving stolen goods, swearing false evidence.

At this time of night, the house with its porters in coachmen's capes and breeches, its pillars with their torches of gas, was fully lit and busy. One of the doormen took a single glance at Verity, Samson, and Miss Jolly, then disappeared inside. The other man made no attempt to stop them.

Verity led the way into the vestibule, the coloured glass of the skylight throwing diffused reflections of rose and turquoise on the black and white tiling. A bedlam of waltzes and polkas came from the introducing-room to one side with its Broadwood grand piano, its pink-shaded lamps, nude statuary, and large gilt-framed mirrors. Officers, gentlemen, Oxford undergraduates who would graduate only in the
Racing Calendar
or
Paul Pry,
danced with Sarahs, Beckys, and Lottys until they made their choice and agreed a price.

Bragg appeared before him, Hardwicke and Atwell either side. The absurd pile of the Bully's black Pompadour hair was newly arranged, his colour high, as if from a dab of rouge. He was drunk enough to be entirely self-confident as the two sergeants confronted him.

'Evening, Mr Verity' His eyes rolled and his mouth opened at the preposterous humour of it all. 'Nice new suit that, after your misfortune down Lambeth. You 'ere for a little hocus-pocus, I daresay? Not rumplin' young Suzanne Berry again, I hope. On'y we don't allow that sort of thing here!'

He grinned hugely at his bodyguards on either side. Hardwicke and Atwell stared at the two policemen with as much indifference as if they were not seeing them.

"Course,' said Bragg humorously, 'if you brought Miss Shop-Mouse Jolly here for a hidin', an' all you want is a room to do it to her, that's easy sorted.'

He gave the same open-mouthed grin.

'No, Mr Bragg,' Verity said casually,
‘I
shan't bother you for a room. I mean to search the premises. I mean to do it now. I'll thank you and your servants to stand clear of my way.'

Bragg shook his head, as if Verity's practical jokes would be the death of him.

'Mr Saward!' he called. 'You hear all that, did you?'

He looked up again at Verity, a hard and triumphant gleam in his eyes. Verity's heart sank. A tall, dark-haired old man, the cheeks sunken and the body stooped, came out of the parlour to one side. His mouth was tightened and pursed as if he had been about to spit phlegm.

Bragg nodded at Verity.

'You tell him, Mr Barrister. You'll do it nicer than me.'

Saward stood before Verity. He sniffed, his nostrils narrowing to little more than bone, and held out his hand. 'Warrant?
^’

Verity stared back at him and Saward spoke, as if to one of simple intelligence.

'Search warrant, mister. Other words, a legal instrument signed on Common Law authority by a Justice of the Peace, authorizing a named officer to enter, by force if necessary, into a specific house or premises for a purpose which must also be specially described—'