A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4)

‘Wapping’, said Bessie firmly, ‘ain’t a place where a lady like you should go walking. Nor me, neither, come to that!’

She was right, of course. Wapping heaved with activity centred on the port and London docks. Seamen of all nations thronged its streets and taverns. Chandlers’ shops jostled opium dives. Cheap lodging houses neighboured brothels. Dead bodies were regularly pulled from the river at Wapping Stairs and not all of them had met their deaths by drowning. I know all this because I am married to an inspector of police, although happily he is based at Scotland Yard.

‘We might not get as far as the Tower,’ I said to Bessie as we stepped off the bridge. ‘But we’ll do our best.’

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Ross! A fine day, is it not?’ He answered his own question before I could. ‘Yes, a beautiful day. It fairly makes one’s heart sing! I trust you are well? Inspector Ross keeps well too?’

His wide smile crumpled his skin like a wash-leather; his eyes twinkled brightly and showed he had most of his teeth in reasonable condition considering his age. I supposed him in his sixties.

I assured him that Ben and I were both in good health and gave Bessie, walking beside me, a nudge to let her know she should stifle her giggles.

‘You are taking the air!’ observed Mr Tapley, bestowing another kindly smile on Bessie.

Ashamed, she made an awkward curtsy and mumbled, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you are right to take the opportunity,’ continued Tapley to me. ‘Exercise, dear madam, is of the greatest importance in the maintenance of good health. I never fail to take my constitutional, come rain or shine. But today one can only feel particularly fortunate!’

‘Our great city at work, on land and on river,’ observed Tapley, using the umbrella as a schoolmaster uses a cane or rule to point out chalked details on a blackboard. Seamlessly, he continued: ‘My regards to Inspector Ross. Tell him to continue his stalwart efforts to rid London of scoundrels.’

He tipped his hat, beamed, and walked on. We watched him skirt a small crowd that had gathered round a street entertainer, bounce across the road on his small neat feet and head north through the narrow streets leading up into The Strand.

‘He’s a funny old gent, ain’t he?’ observed Bessie disrespectfully but accurately.

‘He’s obviously fallen on hard times,’ I told her. ‘That’s not his fault – or we don’t know that it is.’

Bessie considered this. ‘You can see he’s a gent all right,’ she conceded. ‘He must have had money once. Perhaps he gambled or drank it away . . .’ Her voice gained enthusiasm. ‘P’raps he had a business partner who made off with the cash or perhaps he—’

‘That’s enough!’ I said firmly.

Bessie came to join Ben and me when we married and set up home. She has the stunted but wiry build of one raised ‘on charity’ with the quick wits and sharp instincts of a child of the city poor. She is as ferocious in her loyalty as she is in her opinions.

The street had been surprised when she took in Thomas Tapley as a lodger six months or so earlier, because she was a lady with some claim to status. If she needed to let one of her rooms to supplement her income, she could have been expected to select a professional man for her tenant. But Mr Tapley was possessed of a certain charm and innocence of manner. For all his down-at-heel appearance, the street soon decided he was ‘an eccentric’ and approved his presence.

How odd it was that a chance meeting and a simple exchange of courtesies should draw both Bessie and me into a murder investigation. But no one could have guessed, that fine, bright spring morning, that we were among the last people to see Thomas Tapley alive, and to speak to him, before he met a violent death.

We were growing weary as we approached Waterloo Bridge once more. The embankment here was always a busy spot, with passengers making their ways to and from the great rail terminus of Waterloo on the farther side by cab and on foot. Inevitably, street entertainers, peddlers of small items ‘useful for the journey’ or out-and-out beggars had stationed themselves here. They didn’t venture on to the great bridge itself because of the guardian of the tollbooth who wouldn’t have permitted it. The police, if they caught them, also moved them on. The offenders always came back. Being occasionally arrested for causing an obstruction didn’t deter them.

Bessie’s sharp eyes had spotted something. She tugged at my arm and hissed, ‘Missus! There’s a clown there. Do you want us to turn back?’

He was harmlessly engaged in juggling some balls, pretending to drop one and catching it at the last minute, while keeping up a shrill patter in a falsetto mimicking a woman’s voice. His antics didn’t bother me. It was his painted face: a dead white, eyes outlined with blacklead with long eyelashes drawn above, mouth coloured vivid scarlet with lips pursed as if about to bestow a kiss, and another large round scarlet spot on each of his puffy cheeks.

I’ve never liked clowns, though the word is inadequate to describe the real horror they inspire in me. I panic at the sight. My heart pounds and terror tightens my throat so I can barely swallow. I can hardly breathe. You’ll think me foolish but nothing so real can be dismissed as nonsense.

The abiding fear dates from an incident in my childhood. I was six years old. My nursemaid, Molly Darby, persuaded my father that I’d enjoy a visit to a travelling circus that had set up camp on fields at the edge of our town. My father was doubtful. As a doctor he knew the dangers of being in unwashed crowds. But there were no fevers running around the town at that moment and Molly insisted. ‘She’d love it, sir. Why, all the little ones do.’

She meant, of course, that she would love it.

My father, still hesitant, turned to me and asked if I’d like to go. Carried away by Molly’s assurances of the wonders I’d see, I told him I would. So my father agreed with the proviso that Mary Newling, our housekeeper, should go along with us. I think now he didn’t quite trust Molly’s motives, out and about with only a six year old as chaperone. He probably suspected an assignation with an admirer. If so perhaps he was right, for Molly’s face certainly fell when she heard that Mrs Newling was to be of our party. But she cheered up because we were at least going.

As for Mary Newling, it took an hour to persuade her. ‘It’s not a place any decent woman should be going. There will be thieves and vagabonds everywhere and folk doing things they shouldn’t!’ This last claim was accompanied by a meaningful glare at Molly.

She blushed but stood her ground. ‘Dr Martin says it’s all right.’

So, with Mary Newling still grumbling, off we set. I hopped along full of anticipation. If anything, Mary’s warning of vagabonds had made the trip more exciting. I wasn’t sure what a vagabond was, but it must be an interesting beast.

We faced a circular area floored with sawdust called, said Molly importantly, the ring. It was empty but any moment wonderful sights would fill it.

‘We’re packed like herrings,’ groused Mary Newling, unimpressed, ‘and a lot of the folk here are strangers to soap and water, it seems to me. If a body were to be taken faint there’d be nowhere to fall. They’d have to lay the poor soul on that . . .’ She pointed to the sawdust floor.

Just then a band took up its place on a podium to one side. It was no more than a couple of fiddles and a trumpet-player, together with a man either banging on a drum or rattling an instrument of his own invention: a pole with various bits of metal attached. It made a wonderful racket when he beat the end of his staff on the ground. I was more than ready to believe Molly’s assertion that it was a proper orchestra.

When the orchestra fell silent, into the ring strode a fine moustachioed gentleman in hunting pink and dazzling white breeches. He saluted us with his top hat, bid us welcome and to prepare to be amazed. He then turned and pointed with his long whip to a curtained spot behind him.