Death at Hungerford Stairs (5 page)

Who shall say which man's life is worth more? The man lying by the inn wall? Tommy Titfer? He was a villain in a small way, a low, slippery creature whose life began and ended in the greasy slime of the alleys of Seven Dials. Yet later, much later, after the case was over, in a cellar, when Constable Rogers found a starving woman with scanty red hair poking from a dirty cap, and an emaciated child with a curiously high red quiff, he felt only pity for her hacking grief.

Outside Rats' Castle, which had plunged into sudden darkness at the sound of the police rattles, Zeb Scruggs came to, wondering what had happened to Mr Dickens. Blimey! He hoped he wasn't responsible for the death of the most famous man in London. He felt panic, heard the police rattle, and found himself alone, the fighters gone, scrabbling like rats into holes. Someone lay by the wall, the head covered by a long coat, a familiar red scarf trailing like a line of blood in the dust.

When Constable Rogers of Bow Street came into the alley, he saw a big gypsyish-looking man bending over another, a man in a long coat lying by the wall. Injured, obviously. Was the gypsy robbing him? He hurried forward, his bull's-eye lamp held high.

‘What's goin on 'ere?'

The dark-haired man turned, his black eyes anxious in the glare of the lamp.

‘He was knocked out, I think – there was a fight. Don't know what about. I was knocked down, too – he's alive though, heard him groan.'

Rogers went forward just as the injured man groaned again and sat up, his white face bewildered.

‘What on earth happened, Zeb? I saw you fall.'

Rogers looked astonished, his mouth agape. ‘Mr Dickens! What's 'appened to you?'

‘An altercation with a pair of boots, I think, hob-nailed ones judging by the pain in my back. I can stand, I think.'

Dickens smiled weakly as Zeb helped him to his feet. Rogers picked up the length of dusty old scarf, remarking as he did so that it surely could not belong to Mr Dickens, and as for the long coat smeared with mud and a tear in its sleeve, well, it was not fit for a rag shop. Zeb was a little offended by this account of one of his saleable goods, but he agreed that it did look a bit mangled now.

‘Disguise,' said Dickens. ‘We were after information, and when we came out of the pub there, all hell broke loose, and,' he felt in the pockets of the coat, ‘my purse is gone – forever, I expect.'

Rogers caught on. ‘You was lookin' for Scrap and the dog. You think that there dog's been kidnapped. You wasn't goin' to pay a ransom, was you, sir?'

‘That was the idea, and we found a young man who was willing to find out for us – for five shillings.'

Rogers whistled. ‘Five bob, sir. Do you think you'll see 'im again? 'E's probably scarpered with it.'

Zeb interrupted. ‘I know him – he's a sly one, for sure, but I think he'll come and meet us tomorrow. Otherwise, he knows I'll find him.'

‘Are you fit to walk, Mr Dickens? Shall I take you to Bow Street? I don't know what the superintendent'll say when he sees you. We 'ad news, by the way, about that lad found at 'Ungerford Stairs – murder, it was.'

After bidding goodnight to Zeb, Dickens was escorted to Bow Street where the superintendent regarded the old gentleman with astonishment.

‘Charles, what in the world have you been about? Why are you dressed in that coat? Where did you get that hat?'

Sam Weller, Mr Pickwick's faithful servant, seemed to come in, as he so often did, when the superintendent and Dickens were together.

‘Ta'nt a werry good 'un to look at, but it's an astonishin' one to wear, an' every hole lets in some air – ventilation gossamer, I calls it.'

Sam laughed. ‘Very good, Mr Weller, but you ain't answered the question.'

‘Ooh,' Dickens winced as he made to sit down. ‘If you have the heart of anything milder than a monster, you will pity me and my dented pride.'

‘Very well, I do, so sit ye down and tell your tale.'

‘I did disguise myself and went into battle – by accident, of course. I was round and about on enquiries, you might say.'

‘After Scrap and Poll. You were not alone, I hope, in that den of thieves where Rogers found you.'

‘No, I was taken there by Zeb Scruggs, a man of honour, I may say, but we were unfortunately caught up in a riot – and I think I have the bruises to prove it. I don't know what happened – all of a sudden we were in a confusion of arms, legs, staves, wild shouts and everybody hitting everybody else. God knows why – we didn't cause it, by the way, in case you were thinking.'

‘No, I was more thinking about who you were seeing and why.'

Dickens looked a little shamefaced. He hardly liked to tell the superintendent that he was prepared to pay a ransom, but there was nothing for it but to confess.

‘Zeb brought me to Tommy Titfer who seemingly knew something of the dog thieves and for five shillings would bring us information tomorrow night. I know – one shouldn't be paying thieves and rogues, but, Sam, I am getting desperate, so beset and worried – I cannot even face going to Mr Brim's shop – those children are so upset.'

‘I know, so is Elizabeth. However, you have done it now – and no bones broken – I hope. What I suggest is that you go back with Zeb Scruggs tomorrow. If you find out that someone has Poll then, of course, I won't know anything about it. However, Rogers might be about Rats' Castle. He might, of course, be tempted to follow and when, and if, a big if, mind, you do get Poll back, it might be his duty to make an arrest. My conscience will be clear, at any rate.'

‘Thank you, Sam. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that we will find Scrap. I just hope that wherever Poll is, Scrap is nearby.'

‘I hope so, too.'

‘Occy Grave – my crossing sweeper acquaintance – mentioned the King's Head in Compton Street –'

‘Dogs fighting with rats?'

‘Yes, both he and Zeb thought it unlikely, but I wonder, could we – I mean if tomorrow night is no go – should I try there?'

‘Mmm – no, but I'll find out when the next meeting is. They advertise:
Ratting for the
Million
, it says on the posters, if you please. I'll send Rogers and Stemp in disguise. Rogers knows the dog, and Stemp in disguise with some brute of a bulldog will fit in nicely.'

‘Does he have a dog?'

‘Not that I know of, but he'll borrow one – very resourceful, Stemp, and very menacing when he's in the mood. Don't you go – someone might recognise you.'

‘I couldn't stand the sight of all those rats – I used to have terrible dreams about them when I was a boy. Comes of listening to my nurse's stories of a talking rat – even now I'm morbidly afraid of finding one in my pocket. I hated masks, too, and talking of which, Rogers told me that Inspector Harker had reported that the dead boy at Hungerford Stairs was murdered. What was the cause?'

‘When they examined him at the morgue, the doctor found a slight puncture wound. The boy had been stabbed, but with so thin a blade that it might have been missed. The doctor had very sharp eyes. Stabbed in the heart.'

‘Why would someone murder him? He was just a boy scraping a living in the mud.'

‘Perhaps he found something valuable – something that was worth killing for. Harker is trying to find out more about the boy – whether he belonged to anyone, whether anyone knew that he had found something.'

‘That chalk mark – I wonder now. What did it mean, that masked face?'

The door opened. Constable Feak came in. ‘Body been found, sir – a lad – don't know any more. Up by St Giles's in the churchyard. Stemp is there.'

The clock of St Giles's Church was striking seven as they hurried along the High Street past the shops still open for business: the butcher's window which displayed great hunks of bloodied flesh, ghastly in the flaring gaslight; the pie shop with its wares apparently made of cardboard; the general dealers in bird cages, flat irons, old clothes and all sorts of motley goods of no use to anyone; past the baked potato seller, the sausage man, the café with the eels curled up in the window – dead, not just sleeping, one hoped; the oysters like so many dead eyes in their icy tombs, and the pawnbrokers with the three golden balls. They came to the dark churchyard under the shadow of its great steeple, and went through the stone gateway under the resurrection carving with its angels blowing their trumpets and the haloed Christ in the centre. The last church on the route to Tyburn tree, the three-legged gibbet.

A thin rain was falling now. Here were silence and shadows among the ancient graves where victims of the plague had been buried when the old church stood before this eighteenth-century one. It had started here. Somewhere, thought Dickens, deep down, there were the bones of those who had perished, their bodies empurpled with erupting sores, flung into the plague carts and thence into pits. He thought of the skulls piled upon each other, staring into the blackness, the bones heaped and muddled together, waiting to be reassembled on the Day of Judgement when those angel trumpets would sound. Would they, he thought, those poor disfigured bodies, bloom again as they rose, as he had read once?

Stemp called out, and they went to find him by an old door at the side of the church. On top of a tomb, black, solid and cold in the rain, something lay. They walked into the lamplight, and saw the body face down just as the other had been, the arms stretched out above the head. It was a boy, dressed in clothes which were shabby but clean. Someone looked after this boy. He belonged to someone. But he was too small, surely, for Scrap. It was hard to tell in the shifting lamplight. Dickens glanced at the superintendent, and saw, as before, the tightened lips and anxious eyes.

Stemp turned the boy over. It was not Scrap. There was no sign of any injury. He was a singularly handsome child with bright hair and a fine bone structure. What had he been doing in this black place at night? His face was peaceful; there was nothing to suggest violence. It was as if he had fallen asleep there on the tomb and had simply not woken up. He was terribly thin, half starved. Perhaps the cold had killed him, perhaps sickness, perhaps hunger. It happened, but a boy might drown sometimes, and then be found to have been stabbed by a wickedly thin blade, so thin that it had slid so smoothly through the flesh that a boy might not feel it at first. Until there came the wonder, the surprise, the horror of the blood spilling from the heart, filling the space round it, and drowning the lungs, flooding each vital organ, spurting then seeping with each failing heartbeat so that there came unconsciousness, and then the long sleep, fallen heavy on the sightless eyes.

Superintendent Jones murmured his prayer, and then opened the shabby waistcoat to undo the buttons on the darned shirt. Stemp and Rogers raised their lamps so that he could see. The boy's ribs protruded sharply, but he was clean, and the skin showed pale in the light. It was there, tiny, easily overlooked, the little mark where the blade had gone in.

‘Same as what Inspector Harker reported,' said Rogers.

‘It is – a second murder, by the same hand, I am certain.' Sam's voice was grim.

Stemp moved his lamp, and when they looked down by the side of the tomb, they saw something crumpled beside it, something soft. Rogers picked it up. Gleaming silk rippled in the light like dark water. It was a woman's shawl – not the cheap, scratchy woollen shawl of a poor woman, but something fine and expensive. Stolen, perhaps?

‘Odd. Someone might have lost it, I suppose. I wonder – was that someone running away, having seen something? But then, you would think it would be on the path, not by the tomb. How did it come here?'

‘The murderer?' asked Dickens. ‘A woman?'

‘Could be,' said Rogers. ‘Look at Mrs Manning. 'Ard as nails, she was.'

‘Well,' said Sam, looking at the pattern of red flowers under the light, ‘it is quite distinctive. We might be able to trace it. Milliners, dressmakers, that kind of thing. Meanwhile, Stemp, you need to go back to Bow Street to organise the removal of the body – you'll need a stretcher to carry him out of here.'

‘Yes, sir.' Stemp vanished into the darkness.

‘Let us have a look round,' said Sam, ‘see if the murderer left any other convenient clues.'

‘A chalk mark – there will be one. There will be a sign,' said Dickens.

And there was, on the old wooden door behind them. The lamplight showed it as they had seen it at Hungerford Stairs. The mask atop the crudely chalked figure of a man.

‘What's that all about?' asked Rogers.

‘There was one at Hungerford Stairs. We wondered about it then. It didn't look like a child's work, and this confirms it. Suggests disguise, does it not,' the superintendent speculated.

‘Perhaps, as if he – or she – is saying “You can't catch me”,' said Dickens.

Rogers stayed with the body while Dickens and Jones had a look round the churchyard. They went round the back of the church, deeper into the darkness. When Jones held up his lantern at the sound of something above them, they saw peering down at them the face of a gargoyle, its twisted lips mocking them – another mask, a face laughing at death. They turned away into the rank, wet grasses, picking their way through the black tombstones, walking over the tenanted mounds with no stones, but the cone of light sometimes showed them a worn inscription, barely legible now, and a ruined angel with one hand missing – the blessing for the dead one cut off, leaving only an ugly stump more like a curse. Then they saw something – a shape on the ground – something covered in dark material, a blanket or coat, perhaps. They moved nearer, slowly, quietly, until they stood over two prone figures, asleep or dead, perhaps, so still were they, the arms entwined and the heads close together, black and fair hair mingled on the rough coat that covered them. Two girls.