WHEN MY HEAD had cleared somewhat, we had a discussion, Gully and I, but arrived at no firm conclusions. We agreed that the watch was something a man would be reluctant to be parted from. It had landed up in the hands of a moneylender called Rossetti some time after he had acquired it from Strauss, some time after its owner would seem to have disappeared.
Ben Gully was suggesting we should meet the fence who had passed it to the moneylender.
‘If I can root him out, that is. He’s a bit slippery, if you know what I mean.’
But I had my court appearances to deal with so I left him to pursue that opportunity while I went on with what other business lay to hand. I needed to get to court, to set about earning a few crusts to relieve the distress of my creditors. There were attendances at Old Court, Marylebone Police Court, and I also had a guinea brief to attend to at the Thames Police Court. As far as I was concerned, Strauss would have to wait.
So after Gully left, I scurried about on my professional business. It was late afternoon before I set out for the Thames Police Court.
It led to a distressing experience that took my mind off the Running Rein business for a while.
I suppose I ought to admit to you, even though you’re my stepson, that I’ve always been partial to widows.
It was Garibaldi himself who gave me a piece of very sound advice. You didn’t know I was with Garibaldi that summer of ‘60, when he made his advance on Rome to establish the Italian Republic? Oh, yes, I was with him. Exciting times. Great days. A great man. A great patriot. But also a man who had known many women. And if I may say so, a personal friend.
I remember I was there with Guiseppe that day, at the camp in Salerno, a brace of pistols stuck in the leather belt around my waist, and a red scarf around my neck … there was a photographer from the Illustrated London News present to preserve the moment for posterity. We were striking camp, making ready to proceed in great triumph up to Naples to secure the liberation of Italy.
We had a number of political discussions, Garibaldi and I (because in fact I was there acting under commission as a secret agent for Lord Palmerston, who was Prime Minister at that time). But Garibaldi also gave me the benefit of his views about women, along with sound advice. We were seated together in his railway carriage steaming north – his triumphal ‘march’ on Rome was done by steam train, you know – and I was telling him about my serious financial difficulties since becoming MP for Marylebone. I can remember his considered, confidential tone as he gave me his advice.
‘My dear James,’ he said, fixing his glowing dark eyes upon me and fingering his bushy beard, ‘at your time of life, with all the troubles surrounding you, you should be looking for a widow, a lady of means, a lodging lady perhaps. You should marry her, against the possibility of a rainy day.’
Back in England it was a comment I repeated to Charlie Dickens, and of course, like the plagiaristic weasel he was he used it as a thought of his own when he libelled me in A Tale of Two Cities.
But it was certainly sound advice from Guiseppe Garibaldi and I took it, later in ’61, when my professional bubble finally burst. That’s right, my first wife, Marianne, she was a widow – just like your own mother, of course.
But where was I? Ah, yes, the point I want to make is that women are different, one from another – some women, widows or not, can be cunning as snakes; others can be weak as dishwater.
Take my first wife, Marianne. She was a great philosopher. She’d philosophized her first husband – none other than Crosier Hilliard – into a state of delirium tremens, which killed him. She thought widowhood was an impertinence of Fate, and further considered that by marrying me she could make me change my profligate ways. And as for Garibaldi’s advice, well, it was already raining when I led Marianne to the altar after my disbarment at the Inner Temple. It wasn’t a church wedding: the ceremony was held in the office of the British Ambassador in Paris. That’s where the knot was tied.
Unfortunately, the rainy days didn’t stop during the next eighteen months of marital disharmony, either. It was a relief when the court in the Bronx decided she had bitten off more than she could chew, and freed me.
That’s how I came to be free to marry your mother.
But really it was all Marianne’s fault. She just didn’t know how to handle me.
But I digress again. An aged barrister, hey? What was the point I was alluding to? Ah, yes. Women are different. One will proceed with exaggerated caution, another will react precipitately from despair. I mean, they take things like love affairs, or pregnancy, so seriously. It came home to me vividly that day in the summer of ’44, when I went by boat up-river, to the hearing at the Thames Magistrates Court, still mulling over Gully’s discovery of Bartle’s watch, still smarting from the comments that were circulating about the farce of the Running Rein case….
As usual, the Thames that afternoon was soiled and darkened with livid false tints and packed with all kinds of river craft: barges, wherries, coasters and watermen’s boats. Patches of fog, dense and dirty-yellow, were collecting along the river banks and the watery sun gleamed only fitfully through the gloom. I waited for The Cricket steamboat at the Temple Gardens. That was the paddle steamer that blew up later in 1847, there were some fatalities, and there was quite a public outcry about it. However, off I went that day, joined the scrambling crowd at the pier, and stood on the Temple steps as the boat edged cautiously in from the crowded river to the landing.
There was a lot of bad feeling around on the river at that time. One of the steamboats had recently run down a waterman in a skiff and killed him. The master was found guilty of manslaughter and got a four-month gaol sentence … but there was always some kind of trouble between the watermen and the steamboat owners: both sides used to demolish the piers used by the opposition in their competitive struggle for trade.
Anyway, I waited at the steps above the landing in good time for the steamboat: they had a nasty habit, you know, of pulling away at full speed from the embarkation pier before everyone was on board, but I was near the head of the queue. Off we went with a great churning of the river water, the engine chugging away manfully against a background of the slapping sound of the paddles in the grey, greasy water. Groups of black-clad office workers crowded the deck, like attendants at a mourning. The sight did not improve my black mood.
As for the hearing at the Thames Police Court, I needn’t tell you about the proceedings that occurred there that day: they were insignificant. I don’t even remember much about them except that the magistrate was a fat pork butcher who sweated profusely on the bench, it being his first hearing. But whatever the case was, it came to an abrupt end when someone came rushing into the courtroom in quite a hurry, seized some of his companions, and rushed out. The pork butcher bellowed in indignation, found his gavel and slammed it on the desk for order but it was too late: the rumour quickly spread throughout the dark little room. There had been an accident on the river. And as the courtroom rapidly cleared the magistrate decided to adjourn the hearing when the usher whispered in his ear.
A moment later the pork butcher was scurrying outside as fast as his fat little legs could take him. I recall picking up my papers wearily, aware that my paltry guinea would have to be worked for some other time, and followed the crowd outside.
I made my way down to the crowded, heaving embarkation dock and realized that a crowd had gathered there to witness what really was an incident of note. Through the rising yellow mist I could just make out where a decorated barge of some considerable size had collided with the piers of Westminster Bridge. There was a deal of distant shouting, much coming and going of wherries and steamboats, and a procession of wooden skiffs busy disembarking bewigged gentlemen from the barge: it was clear that they were persons of consequence from the crowd that had gathered on the bridge itself, and the waving of hats and cheering as notable individuals were rescued.
At the Devonshire Club that evening I learned that the accident had occurred to the City Barge carrying the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs, the Aldermen and the Secondaries (among whom was my father). The barge had collided with one of the piers. All had been thrown from their seats in the collision with the mace, decanters and glasses from the hospitality tables thrown down and rolling about on the floor. At a distance, I watched the excited scene for a while but was soon bored by it: rather, I became somewhat irritated, because with all the roiling about on the river, and the ferrying of the Lord Mayor’s party to the shore, and the halloing from the massed boats with cheering spectators, there would be little chance of my obtaining even a skiff to take me back to the Temple within the next hour or so.
Moreover, I found myself standing next to another barrister of my acquaintance … Ballantine, who later wrote so disparagingly of me in his memoirs. I always did dislike the man, who had obtained his position in the profession as a result of his father’s influence as a Police Court magistrate. He was a long-nosed, slimy enough fellow, and on this occasion seemed inclined to buttonhole me and engage me in conversation. Perhaps about my humiliation before Baron Alderson or my brush with the Benchers. This did not appeal to me. Accordingly I decided to forgo the pleasure of his company on the next available boat and turned to walk along the bank, to make my way back to the street where I might find myself a hansom cab.
I left the dock and proceeded to make my way along the riverside. This entailed scrambling over scattered river detritus, mud flats and decaying timbers at first, until I reached the narrow, dusty pathway that traversed the riverside. The track was fronted by rank, head-high weeds behind which decaying hovels lurched dangerously on the steep banks that led up to the main thoroughfares.
My boots were filthy. I was about to turn into one of the cobbled, narrow, rubbish-littered streets that led up to the highway, where I might find a cab, when my attention was distracted by a small group that had clustered about one of the ancient jetties that lay above the mudflats. I hesitated, curious.
At first I had thought that they were watching the shouting crowds on the bridge where the mayoral barge had suffered its collision, but soon realized there was more purpose to this group. A wherry had been drawn up at the edge of the mudflat; several brawny workmen were dragging at what seemed to be a kind of net, which resisted, surging heavily in the filthy water. They were paying no attention to the events at the bridge, and they were supervised by a man in a blue frock coat and tall, black-varnished hat. The supervisor’s hands were locked behind his back; he was staring at the thing the men were drawing with difficulty from the river, and he bore an air of square-shouldered, imposing authority. Curiosity got the better of me and I walked towards the jetty, until I was standing just behind the man in the blue frock coat.
My steps echoed on the ancient, rickety timbers of the jetty. At the sound of my approach the man in the varnished hat turned slowly. He was a lean-featured fellow apart from his mastiff jowls; he wore reddish-hued side whiskers, and his small, deep set eyes were a startling blue. He was a little above average height, narrow in the hips, but the hands locked behind his back were large and meaty. His sharp glance met mine and I stopped: he observed me for several seconds, as though appraising me, and then nodded slightly, raised a hand to touch his hat. The carefully polished gilt buttons on his coat glittered in the watery afternoon sunshine. I did not know him, but I felt I caught a glimpse of recognition in his sharp glance as he looked at me. A moment later the suspicion was confirmed.
‘Mr James, is it not?’
I was surprised. ‘You have the advantage of me, sir.’
He smiled. His teeth were yellow-stained, wolfish. ‘Inspector Redfern. I have seen you on occasions at the Thames Police Court, and once at the Old Bailey, sir.’
A policeman, evidenced by his uniform coat and hat; I had been blind not to have realized it. I stepped closer to the officer, peered past him to the men grunting and heaving at the jetty’s edge. ‘So what’s happening here?’
Inspector Redfern glanced back to the workmen then turned back, observed me calmly. ‘An unfortunate, Mr James. We come across many such. This time, it seems, a young woman.’
I stood there just behind him for several minutes and watched in horrified fascination as the men succeeded finally in dragging the thing caught up in the net out of the muddy water. The clothing was sodden, the grey cloak heavy and stained, hair plastered to the skull, features swollen as a result of the woman’s immersion. There was an ugly sucking sound as the corpse was lifted over the gunwale of the skiff, then a deep trail was marked in the mud as the skiff was dragged across the mudflat towards the jetty. Inspector Redfern seemed unmoved by the activity, standing with his hands once more locked behind his back, almost indifferent to the scene, but it was the first time I had seen a corpse recovered from the river and I remained just behind the police inspector’s shoulder, horrified, nauseous, yet fascinated.
Over his shoulder, Inspector Redfern commented after a thoughtful pause, ‘There was thirteen children went overboard from a steamboat last year: three of them died this way. Not much chance of survival if they inhales the filthy water. Bound to be accidents, of course.’ He nodded casually in the direction of Westminster Bridge, still packed with spectators observing the hapless Lord Mayor’s barge. ‘We calculate there’s two hundred steamers constantly navigatin’ the Thames apart from the three hundred or so sailing vessels carrying coal from Newcastle and the barges bringing grain and building stone up from Kent. And with the Diamond Company now taking wives and families down to Gravesend or Ramsgate for the summer, bound to be even more accidents, I reckon.’
He shook his head dolefully. ‘I mean, they’re crowding people aboard at a shilling for a fore cabin and eight pence for an after cabin.’ He paused, glanced at me, leered, showed yellow teeth ‘Makes it a bachelors’ week for the husbands in the City though, don’t it, till they rejoin their families at weekends.’
My mouth was dry. I was unable to tear my glance away from the drowned woman being stretched out on the dock. ‘You think that’s how she died? Falling overboard from a steamboat?
Inspector Redfern took a doubtful breath and shook his head. He removed his black varnished hat and polished the crown, absent-mindedly. ‘No, my guess is this one was a jumper. They throw themselves off the bridges at high tide, you know. Sometimes it’s weeks before they wash up on the shores, depending on the tides; other times they fetch up just days, or even hours after they go in. It’s usually because they’re poor, starving … or are in an unwanted, interesting condition.’ He paused, sniffed, leaning forward as the corpse was laid out on the jetty. ‘Not that this one was struggling against poverty, if I could hazard a guess from her clothing….’
She wore a dress buttoned up to the throat; her petticoats were soiled from the water. The dress had been torn at the shoulder, exposing the flesh of her upper arm: her skin was white and unmarked. Her eyes were wide, staring sightlessly at the sky but strands of wet, bedraggled hair spread across her face, half-hiding her features which had begun to bloat. But there was something about her, and the soiled grey cloak about her waist that brought back a memory….
Inspector Redfern replaced his hat. ‘Sometimes the fishes have feasted well from ’em,’ he murmured, almost to himself. ‘But this one, she don’t seem to have been in the water long, the crabs haven’t got at her….’
The body was laid on the jetty at his feet. Her head lolled to one side, her limbs were spread negligently, her skirts failing to hide her shapely legs. One of the labourers, a middle-aged man with a pockmarked face, leaned over her and with surprising solicitude rearranged her clothing more decently, smoothed back the strands of hair away from her face and stood looking down at her in compassion. He would have seen many such in the river, I did not doubt, but he had not yet become inured to such occurrences … or perhaps it was the youth of the victim that was affecting him. I too stared at her, unable to drag my eyes away from the pale, bloated features. My eyes seemed to look beyond the ravages the river had wrought, and other images crowded into my mind. I was hardly aware of Inspector Redfern’s orders as he instructed one of the men to arrange a cart for the corpse to be taken away to the mortuary. I remained rooted to the spot, shivering slightly in spite of the warmth of the clouded sun on my back. Slowly, my senses returned and I became aware that Redfern was frowning, staring at me strangely.
‘This your first river corpse, Mr James?’
His tone was solicitous. I nodded dumbly. He kept his deep set eyes fixed upon me. I glanced away from him, across to the south bank, down to the crowded, cheering bridge where the mayoral party were still being rescued, then finally back to the body at our feet. A deep silence had settled among the small group in front of me as they contemplated the thing they had drawn from the grey water, a silence broken only by the rattle of cartwheels on the jetty, and hoofbeats on the weedy, misted cobbles. My mouth was dry, and my heart was pounding.
Inspector Redfern sighed. ‘Aye, well, you get used to it. I was there when Samuel Scott, the American diver, took his first flying leap from the topgallant of a coal brig off Rotherhithe, you know. His end came when he tried to emulate that dancing on air performance with a rope around his neck. He got strangled at Waterloo Bridge in front of ten thousand spectators. Last year, that was. But this young lass … ah, she’ll have had no cheering spectators when she took her fall. For her, poor soul, it would have been a lonely, night-cloaked entry into eternity….’
I remained silent. I looked about me at the mist-shrouded lines of ships, the spiderweb of rigging up and down the dirty river, and I thought of the desperation that must have been in the young woman’s mind when she leapt into the darkness to the black waters below.
‘You are returning to the city, Mr James?’ Inspector Redfern asked quietly after a brief interval.
I swallowed and nodded. My tongue was thick in my mouth. ‘To the Temple.’
‘Please permit me to offer you transport to the Inn,’ Redfern offered, caressing the gilt buttons on his frock coat. ‘I have a cab waiting. My men here will now attend to this business.’
I was reluctant, and hesitated.
‘It will be no problem,’ Redfern assured me, ‘and I would be honoured to offer my assistance.’
Without being certain why, I wanted to refuse him, but could not find the words. I dragged my glance back to the woman on the jetty. Redfern stepped closer. ‘Your first river corpse, Mr James,’ he murmured. ‘I understand your natural distress. But if I may be so bold … I seem to detect something else….’
My senses were reeling. There was a great pounding of blood in my ears. My mind was filled with images … how long ago had it been? A drunken evening with Serjeant Wilkins snoring in the cab beside me, a dark street, a lonely, distressed young woman at the street corner. I could have stopped, got out, found some way to help her, console her, but now it was too late.
‘Am I correct, Mr James, in assuming…?’ Redfern’s voice was soft, gentle yet oddly menacing.
I chewed at dry lips. I knew what he was asking. I was unable to utter a denial. After a short interval, I nodded, gazing in horrid fascination at the sad bundle at our feet. ‘Yes,’ I muttered. ‘Yes. I can’t be certain, but …’
‘You are able to identify her?’
‘I think so,’ I muttered. ‘Only days ago … but yes, I think I know who she is … was … might be …’
Inspector Redfern shuffled closer to me, touched my elbow respectfully. ‘I will take you back to the Temple,’ he said quietly.
He led the way from the jetty and I brushed past the workmen as they lifted the corpse into the mortuary cart. I followed Redfern up the cobbled slope between the overhanging balconies of the wooden slum dwellings until we reached the thoroughfare beyond. The rattle of cabs, carts, and the squabbling calls of a flock of geese being taken away from Leadenhall Market brought me back to my senses. Redfern’s cab was waiting, a caped, disgruntled driver huddled in his seat, whip in hand.
Inspector Redfern opened the cab door, stepped to one side to allow me the privilege of entering first. As soon as I was settled he climbed in to sit opposite me and called out directions to the cabman. With a lurch and a clatter we were off, rattling over the cobbles and I settled back against the horsehair-padded seat, uncomfortably aware of the challenging scrutiny of the police officer’s eyes.
‘I have been reading the proceedings of the debate on the Brothels Suppression Bill, introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ Redfern announced after a few minutes. ‘Lord Foley has expressed the view that putting down such houses of ill repute will lead only to their transfer and re-establishment to other parts of the city.’
I was glad of the changed subject. I licked my dry lips. ‘I understand the Bill has been withdrawn.’
Redfern nodded. ‘I believe that is so. The result will be that, among others of her persuasion, Black Sarah will be able to continue her nocturnal activities in the Ratcliffe Highway.’ He paused, meaningfully. ‘I take it you are acquainted with Black Sarah?’
‘I’ve heard of her,’ I replied stiffly.
Redfern shifted in his seat and stared gloomily out at the dreary buildings we were passing. ‘Perhaps it was in that area around the Ratcliffe Highway you might have met the unfortunate woman we’ve recovered from the river?’
Stung, I retorted quickly, ‘What do you imply, Inspector?’
His tone was calm and measured. ‘Forgive me, Mr James. I am applying logic, that is all. You are a young man who spends much time in the Temple. Your profession is a demanding one. Court proceedings run late into the evening. Your chambers are close to places of entertainment. I am aware that many of your colleagues frequent the night houses in the town; I am also aware that the young woman we have just recovered from the river, while reasonably well dressed, can hardly be described as one of the Upper Ten Thousand.’
A certain irony had entered into his tone.
Irritated, I snapped, ‘You’re suggesting that the dead woman was a whore.’
‘You will have made her acquaintance in some other capacity, Mr James?’
We lurched our way into a crowded Fleet Street, pausing while the cabman cursed vociferously at the driver of some skeletal horses bound for the knacker’s yard. They were dragging a cart piled with already dead nags. I answered the police officer with a surly stare. ‘I have met the dead woman on only one occasion.’
Inspector Redfern raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Yet you recognized her almost immediately, even though the river has somewhat changed her features?’
I hesitated. ‘She … she made an impression on me at the time.’
‘And am I correct in assuming she was a whore?’ Redfern pressed.
I wriggled uncomfortably on the odorous horsehair seat. ‘I did not say that. I have no way of confirming the suggestion, except that….’
‘Yes?’
I sucked at my teeth, thinking carefully. There were people to protect here. ‘All I can say is that I met her just once. It was in the Cider Cellars. She was in a state of some distress, I felt a certain sympathy for her. Then, when I left the night house, as I made my way back to the Temple I caught a glimpse of her at the street corner. She was huddled in a doorway. She seemed … distressed.’
‘The Cider Cellars … she was with a man?’
I shook my head. ‘She entered alone. And she left again within a matter of minutes.’
‘Yet she was in an unhappy state, so much that you clearly observed her.’ The police inspector leaned forward, elbows on bony knees, frowning in concentration. ‘Do you know what might have caused her distress?’
Now you have to understand that there was a matter of loyalty to friends here, even though I must admit I’ve never been strong on loyalty per se. But, apart from loyalty, more seriously, Lester Grenwood owed me money and I did not consider it sensible to place him in any kind of jeopardy, however much I might have disagreed with his behaviour that night when I had escorted Serjeant Wilkins back to his lodgings. In my opinion the whole thing was none of my business, and the death of the young woman, occasioned possibly by despair over her pregnancy, was a matter about which I could do nothing. It was done; it was over; and for that matter the girl’s death might have had nothing to do with Lester Grenwood.
In short, I had no desire to become further involved.
‘I observed her,’ I replied carefully, then added the lie, ‘but the reason for her distress was unknown to me. I saw her briefly; I noted her distress; she left and after observing her in the street I saw her no more.’
‘Until today,’ Redfern murmured. His cold glance was riveted on mine. I gained the impression that he knew I was lying but he also knew that there was little he could do about it. ‘Are you able to give the dead woman a name?’
I hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I believe she was called Harriet. It is the only name I heard.’
Inspector Redfern stared at me for a few moments then leaned back in his seat and lapsed into silence. After a while, he tapped at the roof as the cab clattered along beside the alley leading to the Temple Church. As the driver hauled on the reins I put my hand on the door and looked at him. ‘So what will happen now?’
Inspector Redfern’s tone was cool, almost unconcerned. He shrugged. ‘A dead woman of an uncertain reputation, recovered from the river where it would seem she probably entered of her own volition, and a name, Harriet, the only identification we are likely to receive … there is little more that can be done.’
‘You will make no further enquiries?’
‘There will be a report, then a coroner’s enquiry as a matter of form,’ Redfern replied diffidently. ‘If any further information is received proceedings may be undertaken, but such an occurrence is unlikely. Desperate women enter the river daily; identification is difficult where whores are concerned, and my guess would be that this … this Harriet would have been at the edge of that particular world at least. So, Mr James,’ he said as he bared his yellowed teeth in a mirthless smile, ‘it is unlikely that you will be called upon to take any further part in this matter.’
Sweating profusely, but relieved, I got out of the cab, and closed the door. I paused, looked up to the policeman. ‘Thank you for your assistance, Inspector.’
‘And yours, Mr James,’ he replied drily, leaning his head through the window, and raising one finger to his hat.
I watched as the cab clattered away down the thoroughfare. I was aware of a heavy feeling in my chest. The prospect of the low ceilings and confining space of my lodgings at Inner Temple deterred me. I made my way into the Temple Gardens and sat on a wooden bench under the trees overlooking the busy, crowded, deathly river. I thought about Harriet as I watched the curling mist….
As I suggested to you earlier, women can sometimes take things so seriously. I mean, there were the rich, unattached women who had lent me money and were unreasonably indignant when they found out about each other; there was my first wife, making so much fuss over that business with an actress….
Of course, the girl at the Cider Cellars had been pregnant. But was that a sound reason for taking her own life in despair? It was so final a solution. It’s why I always preferred widows: they often have a more mature outlook on such matters. They know there are practised persons in the back streets who can always get rid of what we might call unwanted encumbrances. They tend to be more rational, more discreet. But to leap from a bridge into the filthy waters of the Thames!
Redfern had assumed Harriet was a whore. Somewhere in my chambers I had a well-thumbed copy of Snell’s Guide to the Metropolis, and I was sure Harriet was not listed there among the professionals. I sighed, strangely depressed. Perhaps I should inform Lester Grenwood of the discovery in the river, but recalling his attitude that night in the Cider Cellars I guessed he would be not in the slightest interested, or concerned.
I slapped my hands on my knees. I rose to my feet, and headed for my chambers. It was done. There was no action I could take. I had my own life to get on with. My professional reputation to establish.
And numerous debts to settle.
Harriet was still on my mind that evening, nevertheless; I could not remove from my thoughts the image of the sad, soggy bundle drawn from the river any more than I could discard the memory of the sound of her pleading voice that evening in the Cider Cellars.
Thoughts of Harriet, the image of her lifeless body in the mud of the river bank, the last view I had had of her when she was alive, they returned to my mind throughout the early evening, even though I knew there was nothing I could do for her. But a few glasses of brandy and water in my chambers and a refreshing cigar helped to settle my nerves as I dressed in preparation for my evening meeting.
The appointment had been arranged for me by my grandfather. It was to be dinner at the Carlton Club with one of its more eminent members.
I’ve always appreciated the existence of gentlemen’s clubs: they are oases of quiet conviviality where a man can feel at home without entering the bonds of matrimony.
I was already a member of White’s, and Almack’s, where I did much of my gambling and I enjoyed the company of actors, writers and painters at the Garrick but it was towards Carlton House Terrace, the home of the Tory grandees that I made my way that evening. The meeting was to be with an old gambling acquaintance of my grandfather’s: the Earl of Wilton.
Politics was something I was always interested in … not least because when you’re a professional young man seeking preferment it’s more than necessary that one should rub shoulders with those who rule the country and make decisions that affect all professional lives. Many of the members of the House of Commons came from aristocratic backgrounds and could afford to while away their time in the House, having nothing better to do. But of recent years a growing number of lawyers had succeeded in elections to the Commons and I had it in mind to follow them … for that was the route to political preferment and the highest honours of the profession: Solicitor General, Attorney General, even Lord Chancellor of England. All political appointments.
And, equally important from my point of view, there was the fact that Members of Parliament could not be arrested and imprisoned for debt. Of course, I hadn’t yet reached the stage where imprisonment for failing to meet my financial obligations was becoming a realistic possibility, but I knew my own inclinations and I was aware the day might come (as inevitably it did!) when having the letters MP after my name might help solve many financial difficulties.
An interest in politics is one thing: loyalty to the stated principles of one party or another is something different. One trims one’s sails to the wind. The fact is, I have to admit that I took a somewhat cynical view of the best route to take, to serve my ambition. The route to political success lay by way of the Government benches, and that meant membership of the Tory Party. The obvious first step in that direction was to obtain membership of the Carlton Club.
My grandfather, who had many political connections from the days when he played whist with some of the greatest in the land, had prevailed upon one of those acquaintances to put forward my name for membership. I did not know the Earl of Wilton personally at that time, but Grandfather was well acquainted with him. Indeed, I had heard rumours that Grandfather had in the distant past enjoyed certain amatory escapades in Wilton’s company … when the earl was still the Right Honourable Thomas Egerton and a noted libertine of the day. Be that as it may, Grandfather made use of the acquaintance to arrange for Wilton to issue an invitation to me to dine with him at the club. Consequently, that evening I thrust aside thoughts of poor Harriet, and Ben Gully pursuing his enquiries about Joe Bartle’s watch, while I went back to the West End and prepared for my dinner with Lord Wilton.
His lordship was in his late fifties then; had a considerable paunch, sagging cheeks, hooded eyes; his dissipated, fleshy mouth hidden by a luxuriant, drooping moustache. Ten years later we were to come face to face in the courtroom when he was accused of introducing a whore to the Queen at the Hanover Ball and it was my duty, and pleasure, to attack him in the courtroom for his social malfeasance … or as some brayed, treason. The whole thing got me into some difficulty at the time, as I recall …
However, that 1844 evening in the club Lord Wilton proved on our first acquaintance to be a good host: we dined well on soup and duck and fish and saw off a bottle of splendid hock and a passable claret. No matters of politics were touched upon in our discussion: during dinner our conversation ranged, as I recall, over the prospects for the hunting season and the availability of whores in the West End, as he sat there proudly smoothing his thick, greying moustache. At any rate, the evening passed pleasantly enough, and at the end of it all, when we had retired to the smoking room where an aged waiter provided us with brandy and cigars, Lord Wilton was still passing informed comment on the relative merits of a certain Nelly Cook at Cleveland Gardens and a Mrs Murray who resided at Long’s Hotel in Bond Street. He was clearly more interested in whores than politics but finally was forced to allude to the reason for my presence: my desire to be proposed as a member of the club.
‘I’ll be happy to put forward the name of a grandson of Harvey Christian Combe,’ he pronounced grandly. ‘And I’ve no doubt that my nephew, who is also a member here, will second my proposal.’
I murmured my gratitude, began to mutter something about the aims of the Tory Party, concerning which I knew as little as he, but was relieved when Wilton’s glance began to glaze. After a few minutes he laid his head back on the antimacassar of his leather chair and half-closed his eyes, clearly regarding the interview as over. He was soon snoring slightly, twitching his lips in a half smile, his moustache puffing as he snorted in some sort of sensual half-dream. I finished my brandy, laid aside my cigar. It was time to leave him to his lascivious memories. I was about to lean forward, touch his lordship’s arm and take my leave when I became aware that someone was standing close by, watching us. I turned my head.
It was Lord George Bentinck.
For a few moments his brow seemed thunderous as he stood there regarding me, an outsider in his Tory stronghold and a man who had dared sully his reputation in court. Then, slowly the expression on his heavy features changed. He jutted his lower lip thoughtfully, raised an arrogant eyebrow and then slowly walked forward. ‘Mr James. I was not aware you were a member here.’
I rose stiffly. ‘I am present as the guest of Lord Wilton.’
‘Indeed?’ Bentinck said, expressing surprise. He glanced at the earl, who grunted, stirred, and wheezed away from his amative memories at the sound of our voices. Lord Wilton blinked, stared at Bentinck and grunted. ‘Ha…! Lord George … so you know young James here? Harvey Combe’s grandson.’
‘I had not been aware of that connection,’ Bentinck admitted after a somewhat strained moment, as he frowned slightly.
‘I’m proposing him as a member.’
Bentinck looked at me appraisingly. There was a cold calculation in his glance that I did not care for. And I had no desire to spend time in his company. I inclined my head towards my host. ‘It is time I took my leave, my lord. I have some work to complete before I make an appearance at Bow Street in the morning.’
‘Yes, yes, my boy,’ Wilton replied, appearing somewhat confused and waving his dying cigar. ‘You cut along… pleasure to dine you this evening … regards to your grandfather.’
I attempted to move away, stepping past Lord George Bentinck, but with a slight movement of his heavy shoulders he half-barred me. He smiled in a reptilian manner, his tongue flicking his teeth in predatory fashion. ‘Before you leave, Mr James, I wonder whether I might be permitted to detain you for a few moments. There is something I’d like to discuss.’
He did not wait for my reply, but nodded to Lord Wilton, turned and led the way to a far corner of the room. Reluctantly, I followed. He waved me to a leather armchair placed just in front of the tall windows. I sat down, aware of the cobblestoned rattle of the dark evening streets beyond the windows. Bentinck took no seat himself immediately, but stood with his hands locked behind his back, staring at me with a certain contemplation in his cold eyes. ‘So,’ he murmured at last, ‘a grandson of old Harvey Combe, hey? He was Lord Mayor in ’96, wasn’t he? And wasn’t he the man who carried out the first interrogation of Bellingham for the murder of Spencer Perceval in 1812?’
‘I am told so,’ I muttered. ‘It was the year I was born.’
Bentinck grimaced, and nodded. ‘And I seem to recall he was a great friend of Fox, and Sheridan too … didn’t the Duke of York visit him once at Cobham Park to play whist? The Duke of Cambridge too? He moved in exalted circles, your grandfather, for all that he was … a brewer.’
Irritated at the sneer, I began to rise from my seat but Bentinck forestalled me with a raised hand. He flicked at his coat tails and took a seat in the armchair facing me. He rearranged his heavy features into the imitation of a smile. ‘Not an aristocrat, but a wealthy landed gentleman heaped with public honours. And your father, recently become a Secondary in the City, I believe? He will have married Combe’s daughter.’ He smiled more broadly as he stared at me, allowed his glance to linger over my features. ‘Hah … now, in fact, I seem to detect a certain resemblance….’
A brief silence fell as I struggled to hold my temper in the face of Bentinck’s sneering tone. At last, I said, ‘There is something you wanted to discuss with me?’
Bentinck raised his thick eyebrows and nodded slowly. ‘Yes… since you’re here. Our recent common experience … I suppose you’re aware that the damned Jew Levy Goodman made a considerable amount of money out of the Derby? In spite of all the hullabaloo. Odds of ten to one, it seems. What about you, Mr James? Did you have much money yourself, backed on Running Rein?’
I had no desire to discuss the tattered state of my financial affairs with the Chairman of the Jockey Club. I made no reply. After a short interval, Bentinck curled his lip cynically. ‘Ah, well, your business to be sure. But an unfortunate affair, entirely. And I must admit, it did not end to my satisfaction. Nor can I say that I enjoyed my experience in the limelight of the Exchequer Court, in front of that hooting crowd. Well whipped up by your, ah, forensic skills.’ He grimaced, squinted at me reflectively. ‘But one should not look back. One should move on, look to the future, suppress unpleasant memories, don’t you agree?’
I made no reply, but waited.
‘On the other hand, I must confess that you, Mr James, you made an impression on me,’ Bentinck continued in a silky tone. ‘Naturally, I did not care for your forensic arrows in my direction, but I admit there was a certain vigour in your attack in the courtroom, which is praiseworthy in a young advocate at nisi prius. A considerable practice could well lie ahead of you. With your father’s connections in the City, your grandfather’s reputation …’ He paused, glanced around the room, rested his gaze on Lord Wilton who had already returned to his slumbers. ‘Not to mention well-placed friends in a club such as this.’
The hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. I could not yet see where this conversation was proceeding, but a stain of suspicion was beginning to cloud my mind. Though not my judgement.
Bentinck folded his big, reddened hands over his chest, drumming his fingers lightly on the buttons of his waistcoat. ‘There are many lawyers in the House of Commons these days. Your grandfather was a member of the Council for London for many years of course … so in seeking to become a member of the Carlton do I detect that you yourself at some stage might be interested in finding a seat?’
I raised my chin defiantly. ‘I have yet a career to make in the courts.’
‘Assuredly.’ There was a hint of cynicism in Bentinck’s thin smile. ‘But if Wilton’s support gets you into this club, where you will rub shoulders with the Prime Minister, and his brother, and senior members of the Conservative Party, I feel sure that in a short time a borough might well fall into your lap.’
‘I have no such grandiose thoughts at the moment,’ I lied.
‘That may be so, James, but …’ Bentinck reflected, as his narrow eyes bored into mine. ‘Nevertheless, I’m sure you’re well aware that the first step is membership of this club. The problem is that, well, one’s acquaintances can sometimes let one down. Particularly if a person is unwise in the choice he makes of roads to wander down. A person can sometimes follow his nose into alleyways that can lead to … unforeseen consequences.’
You know, my boy, I learned very early in the courtroom that if one is quick-witted enough it is always possible to discern the blade that is hidden under the cloak, however well concealed it might be. Moreover, though Bentinck was choosing his words with care, he was no lawyer, he lacked the finesse for this kind of business, and his arrogance would not allow him to hide his feelings and intentions too closely. I was on my guard: I could already detect the half-hidden poniard.
‘This rogue Levy Goodman, for instance,’ Bentinck continued in a decidedly casual tone that fooled me in no manner. ‘He is well known to be an undesirable, unprincipled liar.’
It takes one to recognize one, I thought. But aloud, I said, ‘I have no acquaintance with the man, outside that day in the courtroom.’
‘Is that so?’ Bentinck queried. Oddly enough he seemed surprised and was on the point of saying something more, but then hesitated, leaned back in his chair. He looked about him, raised a hand, gesturing to the aged waiter leaning against the far wall and ordered a brandy for himself. He offered me none. But he fixed me with a cold eye as he waited for his refreshment and said, ‘Well, I may tell you he has something of a history: thuggery, race-fixing, pugilistic frauds….’
‘But nothing proved, I understand.’
Bentinck glowered at my taunting tone. ‘And then there’s the matter of Running Rein. A bad business for everyone. But … as I said earlier, one must move on.’ His glance slipped away from me as he added, ‘I am of the firm view that the 1844 Derby is a book that should now be regarded as closed.’
‘You are not interested in what was the truth behind the affair?’ I taunted him.
He frowned, raised his chin. ‘We reached the truth in court! As far as I’m concerned, the issues were finally dealt with in Exchequer. Moreover, Baron Alderson’s strictures were, shall we say, received unhappily in certain quarters. There is a view among many of my friends, men of consequence that these matters should now be laid to rest.’
‘Buried, you mean?’
I was surprised by his reaction. His eyebrows shot up alarmingly. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he demanded angrily. I shrugged carelessly, and his stubby fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. He was always a man of uncertain temper, unable to control his emotions. Now, irked by my tone, he fully withdrew the poniard from its sheath.
‘Look here, James, let’s say it plain. It’s my view, and that of the Jockey Club, that after Alderson’s strictures matters should be let rest. But it’s come to my attention that you are still involved in making certain enquiries….’
‘I can’t imagine where you might have heard that,’ I interrupted stiffly.
‘If my information is correct,’ he responded with a surge of anger, ‘you’re sticking your nose into matters that are no longer of any concern to you. I think you should be made aware that any further enquiries will not find favour in quarters that have influence. The plaintiff, Mr Wood, has agreed to let matters rest. Colonel Peel has come to a suitable accommodation with the corn merchant. That reprobate Levy Goodman can be left to look after himself. There’ll be another day for a reckoning there. But as for you … there is no further reason for you to involve yourself in this whole business. Let the sleeping dogs lie. No more stones to be turned over.’
‘Not even to discover the truth?’ I asked sarcastically.
Bentinck brushed the thought aside. ‘Let the matter end here, James,’ he demanded roughly. He paused as the waiter bowed in front of him, the brandy glass offered on the small tray. He took the glass, swirled and sniffed at it, waved the waiter away and sipped carefully at the liquid. Over the rim of the glass he observed me with hot, angry eyes.
‘You have what might be a glittering career ahead of you, James. You could enjoy a fine career at the Bar. Entry into Society. The friendship of great men. Perhaps political preferment. So don’t be a damned fool. Don’t damage your prospects. By joining this club, you might well be able to gain the friendship of the Prime Minister’s brother, among others. But your proposed membership of the Carlton, that could be endangered if you persist in dragging up further matters connected with that damned horse….’
His meaning was quite clear to me. I knew all about the advantage of an inside track at the races, and I knew it was being pointed out to me that I could have an unhindered run as a member of the Carlton Club … if I behaved. But, perhaps foolishly, I felt resentful, and my dislike of this bully of a man stuck in my throat. I rose, bowed slightly. ‘Thank you for your advice, Lord George. I must now take your leave.’
Bentinck was enraged, hardly able to believe I was resisting him. His tone changed, threateningly. ‘Damn it, James, I want your assurance that you’ll leave this business well alone!’
‘That is something I cannot do,’ I retorted.
For Bentinck it was like a slap in the face. And leaving him sitting there, empurpling, well, perhaps it was ill-advised conduct on my part. I could have used more discretion, perhaps have even been accommodating. Bent with the prevailing wind. But I was unable to countenance further that man’s arrogance, and the underlying menace in his tone.
My intransigence in the matter, well, I knew that almost inevitably it would cost me membership of the club. And with loss of membership there would also be lost the opportunity to rub shoulders with government ministers, gain influence, reach for a seat in the Commons in the government interest … but it was not to be.
The result was predictable. The Earl of Wilton was as good as his word. He duly proposed me a few days later, his nephew seconded me, but a single blackball was sufficient to deny me entry to the Carlton Club.
I had no doubt whatsoever it was Lord George Bentinck’s blackball … or that of one of his minions from the Jockey Club.
The evening that I heard of my blackballing at the Carlton Club, fuming, I met Ben Gully and we had a further discussion about Joe Bartle’s watch. He had had difficulty rooting out the elusive receiver, Strauss, who was rumoured to have gone to Amsterdam on business. The conversation ended with my insisting that Ben continued to pursue his enquiries further among his acquaintances in the St Giles rookeries and along the Ratcliffe Highway. It meant letting him have some more of the money I had squeezed out of the Exeter solicitor Bulstrode, which was making me run short once again with debts piling up. But I was furious about Bentinck’s threats and behaviour; I was put on my mettle, and determined not to be thrust aside by such menaces.
Impetuosity, of course. I would have done better to heed Bentinck’s advice, however bitter the draught might have been to swallow.
However, a few good things seemed to have occurred as a result of the Running Rein case and the hullabaloo that surrounded it. While I had been abused and humiliated by Baron Alderson on the Bench my ranting in court had certainly persuaded certain solicitors who dealt with the seamier clients in town that I was a man after their own heart. As a consequence the trickle of briefs that began to arrive at my chambers was still growing … even if they were not of the most lucrative kind … and I felt that at last I was obtaining the notice I deserved. And needed.
Moreover, The Times was taking an interest. In those days ‘The Thunderer’ used to devote two or three of its pages exclusively to law reports in which the correspondents spared no detail. It led to the Bishop of London spouting from his pulpit that the newspaper had become the ‘only authorised unmoral publication’ of the day. Be that as it may, the details published included flippancies the barristers and judges used to while away the tedium of the courtroom and one such comment I made obtained some prominence. That particular week I’d been briefed to act in another horse case where I’d described the animal as ‘running faster at the nose than on the track’, a turn of phrase that pleased the yellow press. I was also briefed to appear for the Quaker travel firm Thomas Cook Limited in a libel suit. It had been claimed that they had used one of their vans to transport corpses to the crematorium for the London Necropolis Company. Mr Justice Maule was on the bench: he passed the opinion that he could see no libel in the claim. I spoke up quickly: ‘True or not, my lord, I consider it be a very grave charge!’
The judge chuckled, then laughed outright at my quick pun; the well of the court responded, and a roar of laughter spread throughout the room. It was reported in The Times next day, and made an appearance in Punch, after which my reputation was made, if not as a black-letter lawyer, at least as a man of ready wit.
I see you grimace, my boy; the fact is, audiences were more easily pleased forty years ago.
However, while I was pursuing my practice in the courts, yet still brooding over the injustice of Baron Alderson’s strictures, Cockburn’s betrayal, and the threats of that rogue Lord George Bentinck, Ben Gully was busy burrowing into the rookeries, talking to people, following up suggested leads, and spending my money. Well, Bulstrode’s anyway.
But Ben was always an honest man, after his lights. He left a note at my chambers on the Friday evening. He had traced Strauss at last. An assignation had been arranged.
I hate rats.
It’s an incontinent, unreasoning hatred. Even though I recognize that fact, the rustle of their scurrying steps, the sound of their panicked squeaking, the general evil appearance of their little red eyes and predatory teeth have always made me shudder and break out into a cold sweat. So it was with a degree of trepidation that I fought my way along the street that Friday evening, thrusting my way through the chaos of peripatetic placard men, pedestrians with wheelbarrows or perambulators, small traders with donkey carts, cows being milked by maids outside houses, streams of animals, private carriages and omnibuses all inconvenienced by the gas and water companies repairing mains and the slum clearances that had commenced with a view to connecting the new railway to Whitehall.
The thing was, Gully had asked me to meet him in Bunhill Row, near Moorgate, for a certain sporting occasion.
Blood sports have always been popular in the metropolis but had been banned some nine years earlier: bullock-running, bull-baiting and bear-baiting, or throwing sticks at tethered cocks for fun were activities no longer to be seen in public places. But in the poorer parts of London, if you knew your way around, you could still watch specially-bred dogs fighting each other for the delectation of the Fancy … or you could watch dogs fighting rats, if you knew where to look.
Ben Gully knew where to look.
A good ratting dog could fetch a high price in those days, you know. And rat-catchers could make a good living. One publican I acted for in court was reputed to buy over 25,000 live rats a year, at threepence each, mainly from the country about Enfield. His consequent sporting occasions drew the attention of titled ladies and noble lords, he claimed, and I believed him … without attempting, or even desiring to attend one of his entertainments myself.
But that’s where Gully was taking me that evening. A short cab ride together and I found myself following him into a two-roomed house in a dilapidated part of Bunhill Row. Gully had informed me it was used by a notorious dog-trainer who kept a dog pit in the house. At the front entrance a battered-featured thug tapping a thick cudgel meaningfully against his gnarled hand took the entry fee that Ben provided and we were allowed entry through to the back of the verminous, odorous house. Ben gestured upward: the pit was located on the first floor. There was no staircase: the upper floor was reached by way of a rickety wooden ladder that gave access to a ceiling trapdoor.
We clambered upward, Gully leading the way. The hot fug and stench as we entered the crowded room made me gag but it seemed to disturb in no way the cluster of men and women who had gathered around the pit. The noise was incredible. The inhabitants of the room were waving their arms, enthusiastically shouting out wagers, stamping on the wooden boards, screaming and yelling encouragement mixed with curses at the animals. The stench was inevitable because all the windows on the upper floor had been boarded up and light was provided by smoky, flaring gas jets which gave the room a shadowy, dancing, eerie appearance. The pit itself was in the form of a small circus constructed of wooden palings, some six feet in diameter. Its timbered floor was stained with blood and excrement. In one corner was a cage teeming with frantic, squealing, excited rats. I caught a glimpse of their likely replacements in sacks bulging with terrified movement, gripped tightly in the huge fists of men with rough clothing, scarred faces, heavy shoulders and merciless eyes.
It was a scene from hell, but in spite of my aversion I could not drag my shivering gaze from the activity in the pit.
As far as I could calculate, some dozen rats had been let loose and set running in the pit against an untrained dog. Quick, efficient kills could set a high price on a ratter but this animal was not doing well, and no bids for the dog were being launched as it scurried around the pit, snapping a back here, a neck there, but failing dismally to deal with the squealing mass of rats as they sought cover in different parts of the circus, crouching against the boards, baring savage teeth, rushing away as the dog tentatively approached them.
The patience of the crowd was quickly exhausted. There was a chorus of disapproving cat-calls until the reluctant owner of the dog reached down into the pit, grabbed the animal by the scruff of its neck and hauled it out, swearing fiercely as he did so. My guess was that it would not have a long life ahead of it. There was a shuffling of feet, a rising jabber of conversation and I looked about me: men in rough jackets and caps, women in shabby dresses, a small group of clearly wealthy patrons of the sport in their rolled collar coats, top hats and cloaks. None seemed to be observing the ring now, as dead rats were scooped up with a broad-bladed shovel; rather, money was changing hands, bets being scribbled on scraps of paper, and then the cage was being refilled with a sack of scrabbling, snapping, squealing vermin.
I was sweating profusely, my throat was thick with panic, and yet I confess to being fascinated, unable to move as the next entertainment commenced.
The bull terrier now thrown into the pit was clearly well known. His left ear hung loosely, half torn away from a previous battle; he walked with a peculiar gait, perhaps occasioned by the bloodied flank on his left side, perhaps by the loss of one eye, the socket now merely a mass of solid scar tissue. There was blood, half-dried on his muzzle. Anticipatory saliva dripped from his jaws. He was an ugly, unprepossessing sight, but the crowd loved him.
And their bellowing rose to a crescendo as some fifty rats were let loose from the wire cage.
The rats behaved as perhaps threatened humans would: they huddled together, gathered in a panicked crowd, rushed to the far corner of the pit away from the cage, and bundled into a mass, those at the outer edge frantically climbing one over another to reach the presumed safety of the centre of the writhing, squeaking pile. But the bull terrier was upon them in a trice.
He was an experienced killer and worked with a ferocious sense of purpose, a committed determination, champing methodically with his wide, blood-streaming jaws, snapping backs and necks with a rigid conviction, throwing each stricken rat over one shoulder in almost the same movement as he turned and snapped fiercely at the next. The vermin made no attempt to break from the pack, stream about the pit, attempt to confuse the attacker. They snapped back, squealed in terror, but held their place as the bull terrier methodically chewed his way through the black, heaving, squealing mass. As bodies and blood flew in the air, spattering some of the onlookers baying above the pit, and as the black and brown corpses began to litter the sanded boards of the circus the remaining rats began, finally, to scatter, and voices were raised, timings being called out, a crescendo of excitement thundering against the slates of the tawdry roof.
I turned to Gully, part-nauseated, part-excited, part-appalled. ‘This tumult … won’t the police hear it? Is there never a raid?’
‘The peelers won’t be coming down into Moorgate when the rat-catching is on. They know better.’
As I stared at him I realized he was not watching the killing in the ring. Instead, his gaze was fixed on a man leaning on the paling at the other side of the pit. Nor did his gaze waver. It was as though he was willing the man to raise his own eyes from the rat-catching, meet his glance, recognize him and acknowledge Ben’s presence.
Through the haze of greasy smoke in the spluttering gaslight I could see that he was one of the better-dressed among the baying fraternity, albeit a little flamboyant and perhaps out-moded, a man seeking to keep up with fashion by buying second-hand clothes discarded by wealthier members of society. A silk handkerchief drooped casually from his yellow waistcoat, the green coat had once been of a stylish cut, and his wristbands were slightly grubby. His hair was black and long, composed with a careful disorder, combed forward, divided nicely so as to allow one greasy lock to curl on his forehead. His eyes were as black as his hair, I realised, as he looked up at last, caught Gully’s eyes on him, and stiffened, holding the glance.
I thought I detected a certain enquiry in the man’s black eyes, a concern, but the glances of the two men seemed to be locked for several long seconds before some agreement must have been reached, quietly, without words, for Ben suddenly turned aside, touched my arm lightly, and murmured, ‘Come, Mr James. Let’s go back downstairs.’
I was glad to follow him, escape down the ladder, get away from the whistling, cheering, raucous crowd and the stench of stale beer, cigar smoke, blood, excrement and human sweat. We stood side by side in the dim light at the foot of the ladder. Several minutes elapsed but Gully said nothing. Above our heads the stamping and shouting could be clearly heard: it would no doubt have echoed the length of Bunhill Row but people who lived in this area tended to mind their own affairs.
At last the steps on the ladder creaked above our heads and the man with the greasy locks made his careful way down to the ground floor. As he did so, Gully drew me away so that we were standing in the dark shadow of the narrow corridor, where only stray gleams of light filtered through from the floorboards above. In those gleams motes of dust drifted down lazily, escaping the thundering feet above. I stood beside Ben as the man reached the bottom of the ladder, and looked about him, then came forward.
‘Strauss,’ Ben said carefully, in a low tone.
‘Mister Gully.’ The man called Strauss spoke in a high-pitched tone, a foreign accent, slightly broken. He held his head to one side, at a curious angle. I wondered if he had ever survived a garrotting, or even a hangman’s noose. ‘I didn’t know that you was a follower of the sport.’
‘I ain’t,’ Gully replied gruffly.
Strauss leaned forward, bending slightly at the waist and peered curiously in my direction. ‘And who might your friend be, may I ask?’
‘No need to ask,’ Gully snapped, bringing an end to the enquiry.
‘A gentleman, perhaps, come to see some new sights,’ Strauss suggested, with no clear expectation of obtaining an answer. ‘Still, Mr Gully, if you ain’t come to see the rats, maybe you come to see me. Now why would that be?’
‘I have some questions.’
Strauss considered his reply, mulled it over with a slight shake of the head. ‘Questions, questions. Them as ask questions expect to receive answers, that’s my experience. But you know, Mr Gully, I ain’t in the business of giving out answers.’
There was a short silence. At last Gully spoke in a quiet but firm tone. ‘I know what business you’re in. I’ve known you a long time, Strauss. Done you some favours, too, even when you didn’t deserve them.’
Strauss bobbed his head carefully, weighing up his reply. ‘I don’t deny—’
‘There was that business of the strangling at the penny gaff, for instance.’
‘Now, Mr Gully, there’s no call to dredge up that old business.’ A pleading note had entered the man’s voice. I realized he was older than I had first appreciated. And unsteadier.
‘And I never said a word to the swell mob about the shiv that went into Tom Shepard’s back, that time at Lambeth.’
Strauss whinnied, and gave what seemed a little shuffling dance of protest. ‘Now you know that was none of my planning, Ben,’ he pleaded. ‘The stuff he tried to fence me, it was perilous and he wasn’t honest with me …’
‘Since when was the biggest fence in Clerkenwell dealing with honest folk?’ Ben sneered. ‘But no matter. This ain’t a matter of negotiation. Like I said, we’ve known each other a long time. Something’s come to my attention. I been asking around for a week. Talking to certain of my acquaintances in the rookeries around St Giles way. Mainly without success. But, finally, a whisper came to me. And the whisper, it leads finally to you.’
‘What you talking about, Ben?’ the old fence queried in a sullenly querulous tone.
‘A watch.’
There was a short silence and when Strauss finally spoke there was a note of incredulity in his voice. ‘A watch? This about a watch?’
‘Story is you fenced it.’
‘So, but a watch? What’s so special about it?’
‘That’s my business,’ Ben Gully replied grimly. ‘And relative to the watch, I’ve got a couple of questions that need answers. Where did you get it? Who fenced it with you?’
Strauss glanced uneasily in my direction, shrugged, spread his hands. ‘A watch? I mean there’s a deal of stuff comes through my hands …’
Ben thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the hunter. He held it under the nose of the doubtful receiver. ‘It’s a gold watch. There’s an inscription on the back. A name. Joseph Bartle. I know who you sold it to, but I want to know who it was fenced it with you, Strauss. And I want to know urgent, like.’
It was more than a little while before Strauss replied, peering carefully at the watch, weighing up options open to him, no doubt, and concluding that Ben Gully was not a man to be trifled with, and to argue with him was a game not worth the candle.
It was then, finally, that he told us about the Puddler.
Much has changed in the City these last forty years. I saw many changes on my return from New York, after my ten-year sojourn there. The old rookeries swept away, vast areas of country built over in response to the hunger for houses among the growing middle class, the marvel of the underground railway. … And change continues. It was all so different in the 1840s.
Living in London in those days meant you could never avoid the poor and wretched: they were ever present in the streets and after all only a few paces from the houses of the wealthy in Regent Street lay the teeming rookeries of St Giles whence most of the criminal classes eked out a precarious living among their fetid courts and rubbish-strewn, sunless alleys. I mean, you were certainly aware of them, even if you avoided them like the plague. And the main streets in the metropolis in those days teemed with the lower classes, tending to geese and ducks being driven to market past stables and dairies, cowsheds and abattoirs: even in the Strand there was a cowhouse in a cellar under a dairy. They used to lower the cows down by ropes as the packed traffic rumbled by.
So I’d seen a deal of London, was familiar with its sights and smells and its swarming humanity, but when Ben Gully took me with him in our search for the Puddler I entered a new world. I was of course a denizen of several different worlds already: I was familiar with the splendours of my grandfather’s house at Combe Park; I still visited the village in Herefordshire where I had spent my early years before my father transferred his law practice to Bucklersbury; I had personal experience of the theatre stages in the West Country, particularly Bath, where as a young man I did a short stint in front of the lights, and I had come to know the Inns of Court, Westminster Hall, the Strand, Regent Street. I even had more than a nodding acquaintance with the St Giles rookeries : there had been occasions when a few of us in our cups had ventured down its reeking alleys in search of adventure of the whoring kind. But I’d only heard of Jacob’s Island by reputation, and had never felt the desire to venture there. But that was where Gully took me a few days after meeting Strauss at the rat-catching.
We went by boat, just the two of us, and Ben Gully himself did the rowing. He’d removed his jacket and the muscles bulged in his shoulders and arms as he heaved on the oars. There was a damp, meagre mist on the teeming river, curling slowly upwards and ship sirens boomed plaintively along the length of the turgid stream. The air was cool, but Ben was soon sweating at his exertions. I huddled in my coat, feeling slightly nauseous. It was not merely the river … though the smells were bad enough. It was the thought of our destination. I had met in the courts various denizens of Jacob’s Island: it had an evil reputation.
After a half hour rowing against the flow of the river, Ben sculled us into a gloomy, mist-shrouded, branching creek. The entrance to the narrow stream was screened by tiers of ancient, battered colliers, disused now and moored to rot along the shoreline; the littered banks were lined with decrepit, shuttered warehouses that had long since fallen into decay: their half-destroyed walls, gaping onto the side of the muddy stream, were gap-toothed, green, odorous and slimy. The creek would have been supplied at one time by clear streams from the Surrey hills, but the ravages of man had changed all that: the creek was now an open drain for the refuse that spilled from what houses remained inhabited on Jacob’s Island.
For Ben Gully I was aware it was a return to his early years: I could hear him muttering as he rowed along, almost to himself. At one point he glowered at me from under frowning brows. ‘I remember well how I escaped this as a young lad … the place still smells of the graveyard.’
My thoughts were elsewhere engaged. I closed my eyes and thrust away the surrounding images of Jacob’s Island as I hunched in my cloak and ruminated upon events that had brought me here, and not least the burning desire to get my revenge on that scoundrel Lord George Bentinck. I was becoming more and more convinced that it was he who had put pressure on Joe Bartle, perhaps bought him off, so he would give no evidence in support of Levy Goodman. I was certain it was Bentinck who had also arranged for Running Rein to be spirited away. My conviction had been growing ever more firm since Bentinck had showed the extent of his malice by blackballing the proposal for my membership of the Carlton Club after I had refused to turn aside from my investigations into the Derby fraud.
The skiff lurched and I heard a grinding noise. I opened my eyes. Ben was pulling the skiff in at the side of a broken, weed-encrusted jetty. He tied the painter to one of the supports; I eyed it uneasily, wondering whether the jetty was capable of holding the boat, let alone supporting our weight, but though it creaked and groaned in protest when Ben scrambled onto the sagging planking, it held well enough. He turned, held out a hand to me and I heaved myself up reluctantly beside him. When I grasped the slippery timber of the jetty for support it left a coating of green scum on my hand.
Gully took a deep breath, looked about him with a reluctant eye, perhaps dwelling on old memories, then jerked his head silently, and led the way. Our boots echoed on the crumbling timbers of the jetty and we struck out across crazy, rotting bridges, clearly familiar to him for he showed no hesitation. I am forced to confess that I glanced down nervously as I stumbled along: the bridges spanned reeking ditches where the water was covered with a thick scum and floating masses of green weed. Floating in the water near the bridge posts were malodorous carcasses, swollen with putrefaction, unwanted cats and dogs as far as I could make out, and on the muddy shore were piles of stinking fish bones and oyster shells, sticking up like pieces of discarded slate from the mud.
It was my first time on Jacob’s Island, and the place made a vivid impression on me. So much so that after all the intervening years, I can still taste the acrid reek in my throat, experience again the disgusting smell in my nostrils. Stumbling behind Ben Gully with a handkerchief held to my face, I looked about me at the staggering wooden houses behind the disused warehouses: they had been erected half a century ago with their galleries and sleeping rooms at the rear, standing on rickety, rotting piles above the dark flood. The scene reminded me of old paintings I had seen of Flemish streets except that these houses flanked stinking, undredged ditches rather than canals. Some of the dwellings had been built above the narrow creek itself, with house adjoining house over the filthy ditches, or linked by lurching bridges, and there were signs that they were still inhabited: yellowed linen had been left hanging out to dry along balustrades or staves, or run out on a series of long oars above the slow-heaving, tidal waters, scummed with the outpourings of faecal refuse from the houses.
We continued on our way along the muddy track past some old, broken boats beached on a scummy, weed-strewn stretch of land near a dilapidated wharf. Gully stopped to speak to an old, white-faced, cold-skinned man squatting in the dirt, leaning against the front of one of the houses. I glanced to the back of the house: there were pig sties there, and scratching hens and ducks, lean and ill-fed. The scrofulous old man was staring at me with watery eyes and he said something to Gully, nodding towards me suspiciously. Gully shook his head impatiently: there was a certain threat in his stance as he spoke roughly to the ancient, who cringed. The old man saw Gully’s bunched fist and scowled; he swivelled his head on his scrawny neck and pointed across the tidal ditch towards a crazily-leaning, gape-windowed, dilapidated wooden house that seemed on the verge of collapse. The few remaining shutters of the house were tightly closed: I remember wondering at the time, somewhat fearfully, if fever had struck there recently.
There was no sign of life as Gully led the way around to the side of the house to a narrow, close court. It was almost completely shielded from any sunlight that Jacob’s Island might occasionally enjoy; the air in the courtyard seemed stagnant, and as noisome as the ditches behind them.
‘Who in God’s name lives in these hovels?’ I asked, almost gagging in my handkerchief.
‘These days, corn-runners and coal porters, mainly.’ Gully shrugged with indifference. ‘It’s as much as they can afford. They can earn maybe twelve shillings on a good day, but then might get nothing else for weeks. The longshoremen and toshers are in a similar situation….’
There was a battered sign above one of the windows. I wrinkled my nose as I realized the dismal line of hovels beyond the court had been given the name of Pleasant Row: I wondered what wit had decided upon that name. Certainly no one had had the energy to change it, or even scratch something more appropriate on the sign. That would have required a sense of humour, or energy: I suspected both were lacking among the inhabitants of Jacob’s Island. I picked my disdainful way through littered filth as Gully led the way through a cellar-like back yard past a ragged, female child nursing a half-comatose baby on a doorstep: she watched us pass with vacant, uninterested eyes. Gully turned into Joiner’s Court, a group of four wooden houses huddled around an excrement-laden yard. He looked around suspiciously and then strode to the second of the houses and thundered with his fist upon the door. There was a short silence, then a shuffling sound from within. The door creaked open a little, and a dirty, shaven head appeared. The boy had deep-set, heavy-lidded eyes and his bruised skin was the colour of brown earth. Ben Gully said something that I failed to catch and the boy shook his head sullenly. ‘T’ain’t convenient,’ he muttered, and began to close the door.
Ben Gully kicked out his foot and the door slammed open, taking the boy by surprise. He yelped as he fell backwards, and lay there gasping for a moment, then was quickly back on his feet. He lowered his shaven head and shot past us, out of the house, scuttling down the yard like a frightened rat. Gully looked back and ducked his head, intimating that I should follow him. With even greater reluctance than earlier, I did so.
The house was shuttered and dark, but in the dim light we were just able to make out the litter of rubbish that had accumulated at the foot of the stairs. Gully paid no attention to the downstairs rooms and I could guess that the inhabitants would almost inevitably want to use the rooms upstairs, if only to get away from the proximity of the malodorous ditches outside, to seek a little air above. The handrail to the stairs was broken; as we ascended the creaking steps we moved carefully, Gully warning me of some missing boards. We finally came to a single room at the top of the stairs: without ceremony, Gully thrust the door open with his broad shoulder and stepped inside.
The windows of room had been long boarded up, and only faint chinks of light filtered through the split wood. For a few moments I could see nothing. Then as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness I gradually made out in the filtered gloom a rubbish-strewn, uncarpeted floor, and a broken-backed chair and table. On the rickety table there lay an empty gin bottle, a wooden trencher and some scraps of stale, unidentifiable food. A three-legged wooden bed stood in the corner, half supported by a block of timber dredged from the river. On the bed there was a pile of ragged clothes. Over all hung a miasmic smell of must and dry rot, mingling with the odours from the creek, and I heard Gully growl deep in his throat. Too many memories, I guessed. He closed the door as he gestured to me to stand near the window; he himself took up a position just to the right of the door. We said nothing; I was still gagging into my kerchief. We waited in the dimness as the muted sounds of the island drifted up to us intermittently through the broken shutters of the window.
That damned rogue Lord George Bentinck had brought me to this. I swore fiercely under my breath.
Leaning against the door jamb Gully seemed content to wait. I grew impatient, and fought against the taste of bile in my throat. But I held my silence. It was twenty minutes before we heard a shuffling step on the stairs. Gully held up a monitory hand. A few moments later the door swung open and someone stood in the doorway, a narrow shaft of light picking out his features.
He stood there, stock still, for several moments, staring at me, a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, a long stave in his hand. I could see the boy was young, but his stance was confident and worldly. He was lean and wiry in build, narrow in the upper body but through his ragged shirt there were glimpses of well-muscled arms and chest. Slowly, he let the canvas bag drop to the floor and he stepped forward suspiciously towards me. As he entered the room Ben Gully moved quickly behind him, and in a trice had wrested the stave from his hand and slammed the door shut. The noise reverberated in the empty house like the knell of doom.
‘This,’ Ben Gully announced to me with a certain satisfaction, ‘is the Puddler.’
The boy, startled by the sudden loss of his stave, stared at Gully. ‘What’s the ’ell’s happenin’ now?’
Gully ignored the snarling tone. He glanced at me and sniffed. ‘The reports of the Constabulary Commissioners will tell you, sir, that the inhabitants of Jacob’s Island suffer extreme lassitude and are deficient in energy, as a consequence of the inhalation of the mephitic vapours of the swamp … and that drives them to the gin shops. Impaired digestion, languid circulation, depression of mind … that’s what the Commissioners say.’ Gully grunted and smiled. ‘But you and I know better, don’t we, Puddler? We know you can crack a rat’s neck with your fingers, and carry a heavy load of loot on your back. You won’t yet be fourteen, but you know every stinking courtyard in the rookeries over at St Giles. You know the boatyards and the shoreline and every inch of its slime, and you can outpace any constable over half a mile … after which, you’re vanished! Ain’t that so? You’re a man of consequence and initiative, ain’t that right, Puddler?’
‘Who are you?’ the boy snarled.
‘The name’s Ben Gully.’
There was a brief silence as the boy stood there, tense as a cat ready to spring. ‘I heerd of you, Gully. You used to be from around here.’
‘Used to be,’ Gully almost spat. ‘And it’s Mister Gully to you, my young friend.’
After a short silence, the boy looked again at me. ‘Who’s the swell?’
Gully stepped forward and prodded the shoreman in his chest, pushing him backwards down onto the filthy bed. ‘It’s no matter to you, Puddler, who my companion might be … but watch your tone of voice when you talk to me. And I ask the questions around here.’
‘There’s no cot for you around here these days, Mr Gully, and I don’t know what you want of me,’ Puddler replied, somewhat subdued, but still casting a wary eye in my direction.
‘What do I want of you? Merely a little information,’ Gully said cheerfully, seating himself carefully on the edge of the bed, pinning Puddler’s legs with a brawny arm. ‘I’d like to know what you been up to recently. What necks other than rats you been cracking of late? What cribs you been breakin’ into?’
‘Hey? You got to know better than that, Mr Gully,’ the young boy said, a note of alarm in his voice. ‘If you know me, you know my trade. I work the underground, and an honest trade it is in spite of what the Commissioners say. If it wasn’t for the likes of me, think what would be lost for ever! All I’m doing is plying a trade, collecting—’
‘Thieving, more like!’ Gully intervened sarcastically.
‘That’s not so!’ Puddler started up, seemingly outraged. ‘I only pick up what I find, where it’s lost, and no one can say otherwise.’
‘But you’re not above breaking the rules here and there,’ Gully suggested, almost conversationally. ‘Like lifting something from a drunk in a gutter.’
‘That’s not my style, Mr Gully,’ Puddler rejoined sullenly.
Ben Gully grunted in contempt. ‘Aw, come on, there’s days when pickings are poor down in the sewers, when you’ve got nothing to take to old Strauss. … Did I happen to mention I been talking to him recently?’
Puddler made no reply, but there was a stillness about his body suddenly.
Gully smiled genially. ‘That’s right, my son, I been talking to him. He’s an old friend. Keeps me informed, like all the fences do. I could cause them trouble, you see, a word here, a word there, so they confide in me. And old Strauss, now, when I met up with him at the rat-catching he left me with the impression that he’s worried about you, in a fatherly sort of way … well, not to put too fine a point to it, he tells me he thinks you’ve maybe changed the nature of your trade.’
Puddler shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Gully.’
‘Ah, I know how it is, Puddler! Things are hard going, the sewers have been dry this hot summer, there’s no great wash to the river, and pickings are lean. So how’s a young man of talent to live? Bit of thievery, maybe. Bit of crib-cracking. And I hear there’s been a bit of neck-breaking and garrotting down the West End, too. You coming up out of the sewer to do your bit of that business, Puddler?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Gully! Mr Strauss’s got no call to say things about me that ain’t true. You know me—’
‘Yes, I know you, for a miserable piece of scum who’d sell his grandmother, if you only knew who she was!’ Gully snorted. ‘But no matter. I don’t really care what you’ve been up to, not today, and not as long as you tell me where you lifted this little piece of plunder.’
Gully dangled in front of the shoreman the watch he had earlier shown to me. Puddler hardly glanced at it. ‘Never seed it before.’
Gully was silent for a moment. ‘I think you’d better look at it more carefully, my friend,’ he said quietly. There was a subdued menace in his tone. ‘Strauss tells me you fenced it with him, and he was a bit nervous of it like, since it had a name … Joseph Bartle … etched on the back, and he thought maybe you’d have lifted it from that gentleman’s pocket. So he passed it on, and it finally came into my possession through a contact …’
Puddler detected the threat in Gully’s lowered voice and looked at the watch nervously. He shook his head again. ‘I never—’
Gully’s left hand shot out and grabbed the shoreman’s throat. I stepped back, startled, as there was a wild thrashing in the bed but Puddler could not escape the grip, his legs were pinned under the weight of Gully’s body, and though the boy tore at Gully’s choking left hand he was unable to loosen the pressure of the man’s powerful fingers.
‘Lissen to me, Puddler,’ Gully hissed. ‘If you’re found dead around here there’s none to mourn, none to question, and none who’d dare point a finger at me, even if they cared. You’d be no loss to society, just a nameless grave in the swampy ditch out there. But my companion here, he’s an important man, a busy man, and he’s no time to waste on scum like you. He don’t like the air around here, and as for me … I’m tired of it too. Now I seen Strauss, and he’s told me a little tale, and now I want you to tell me a little tale too. Sort of confirm things, like. Strauss says you came in and fenced this watch … and a chain … with him. Now I just want the answer to some simple questions. Where did you lift this watch? Was it in some back alley? Was the owner drunk in the gutter? Is he holing up somewhere and had to use this to pay for accommodation? And how the hell did you get your dirty little hands on it?’ He thrust his menacing features closer to the struggling, choking boy. ‘What you been up to, Puddler?’
The shoreman’s head was thrashing around, his eyes beginning to roll up into his head as the fierce grip of Gully’s fingers increased. I thought that if Gully did not release him soon the boy would expire; even as I thought so and put out a warning hand, Gully glanced at me, then slackened his grip. He thrust his head closer to Puddler’s. ‘Well?’
The boy nodded desperately, and then as Gully released him he fell backward, racked by a paroxysm of coughing and retching. He sat up, head lowered to his chest and fought for breath. It was several minutes before he was able to speak. Gully remained silent, waiting, watching the boy’s convulsive movements dispassionately. At last, in a tone that was almost gentle, he said quietly, ‘Talk to me, Puddler.’
Puddler shook his head desperately. ‘All right. I seed it before. But it wasn’t no thievery, Mr Gully, I swear.’ He rubbed his sore throat and gagged. He swallowed painfully and stared in reproach at his tormentor. ‘You know that ain’t my caper, Mr Gully. I ain’t changed my style. I found it, Mr Gully, I found it.’
‘Where?’ Gully insisted in a quiet but threatening tone. And the boy told us.
I really ought to explain to you about Puddler.
He was one of those lads for whom the overpowering stench that pervaded the outlet to the main sewer emptying into the river at Shadwell was merely just part of a day’s work. He was impervious to it: he had worked the shores since he was eight years of age and he was well used to ignoring both the stench and the foul, evil-smelling sewage that trickled from the outlet in a black, turgid stream dripping into the river. Every day he’d trudge through the mud, turning into the main outlet where the Commissioners had yet to install the brick walls and strong iron doors that they had erected elsewhere to prevent flooding. The doors were so arranged that at low tide the pressure of sewer water beyond the door would force them open, to spew forth the accumulated filth of the city streets and dwellings. When the tide rose the door was forced shut against the wall so that the shoremen could not enter. But the Puddler knew how to get around that problem.
From what the boy told us, a few days after I had faced humiliation in the Exchequer Court at the hands of Baron Alderson, inside the main sewer outlet Puddler had lit his dark lantern and adjusted his bag on his back. The air was not too bad that day, apparently: it was always somewhat better when the spring tides caused the water to rush through the sewers, bursting up through the gratings into the streets, and flooding the low-lying districts in the vicinity of the river. There were times when Shadwell and Wapping came to be intersected by muddy canals but those were not the good times for Puddler. It made his task – grubbing out a meagre living from pickings in the sewer – that much more difficult. And the spring tides were past. The dry spell had caused accumulations of filth in the sewers, but he had worked in worse air.
You ask what was he about? Well, he had learned his trade early from the toshers who travelled along the muddy shores beside the ship-building and ship-breaking yards. You know about them? The toshers picked up iron bolts, copper nails, lengths of rope, anything of value, stuffing their prizes into the vast pockets of their greasy, velveteen coats. The shoremen wore old shoes and dirty canvas trousers to shuffle through the mud, testing their foothold with long poles at the end of which were large iron hoes. Puddler had learned how useful, indeed necessary, such a pole was when he had been caught one day, struggling in a deep set of sewer mud. The more he’d struggled the deeper he’d been enmired. The pole had saved him: by hooking it into some crumbling brickwork he’d been able to draw himself to safety. His own version was a five foot stave with an iron hook on one end and a stout hoe on the other. He never worked the shore without it.
When Puddler had started, working with gangs of four other boys, he would have heard tales of sewer hunters beset by giant rats, of skeletons that rattled their bones underfoot, or fell clawing from the decaying brickwork of the walls of the sewer tunnel, and of the mythical, vicious wild hogs that lived and fed in the underground tunnels. Puddler learned to discount these tales: there was more danger from the nosys who peered down through the street gratings. They could claim a reward of five pounds offered by the Commissioners for information leading to the apprehension of sewer hunters like himself so the gratings were to be avoided, or passed with care.
He had learned his trade well before leaving the gang to look for ‘tosh’ on his own: he knew better than to scramble over the heaps of rubbish in the darkness of the criss-crossing tunnels by grabbing at the overhead brickwork: the slightest tug and he might be buried in an avalanche of old bricks and earth. He also knew it was dangerous to branch into the smaller sewers leading off from the main run: apart from the discomfort of stooping low and crawling in the noisome mud under a four foot heading there could be foul air and gas accumulated in the confined space. And that’s where the rats nested: they could be ferocious and vicious if disturbed. And there was also the sluice gate which was shut down by high tide and opened by low tide – the water could burst out in a torrent, sweeping everything away in its path.
I gathered that Puddler had no idea what his real name might be: brought up on Jacob’s Island he had always been called Puddler, he knew not why. He could not recall who had first set him to work in the sewers nor who had first given him a canvas apron and a dark, bull’s-eye lantern, and it was a good three years since he had split away from the gangs of boys, to strike out on his own as a sewer scavenger. He was lean, wiry, thirteen years of age and he was able to look after himself, scraping a reasonable enough living from the gleanings of the foul rubbish of the sewer. It was the only life he had known; the only life he wanted.
Puddler never took a dog to protect him from the packs of rats, as some of the other toshers did: its barking could draw attention to his silent progress through the sewage. And he always closed his lantern when he approached a street grating so he could slip past without causing a curious group to gather, telling the policeman on duty that there was someone moving in the sewer below.
So he would go along, raking the mud below with his hoe, picking in the crevices of the brickwork with the hook, occasionally discovering clusters of small articles that had been lodged in the sewer holes formed in the crumbling brick. He took almost everything he found: scraps of metal, iron, nails, coins – some rusted into a mass … spoons, ladles, knives and forks. By plunging his hand into the muck up to the elbow he could bring up shillings, sixpences, and half-crowns. He told Ben, almost with a sort of pride, he had twice found half-sovereigns, probably washed down from a cesspool or house drain where they had been lost. He had once found some ladies’ jewellery: that had been a good day.
As for Joe Bartle’s watch, Puddler had had a feeling about that particular day. There had been some rain after the long summer drought: a heavy downpour had cleared some of the accumulated rubbish. He had decided to work an area he had entered rarely before, because the gangs were too numerous at Snow’s Fields, his usual entry point. So he had worked his way carefully from the shore outlet towards Mint Square, where the sewers were noisome with numerous pockets of gas.
Not much of a life, hey?
Shortly after he penetrated the main sewer slushing through the thick sewage, he had heard the dull booming ahead and had quickly stepped into a side sewer, crouching down as the rush of water from the sluice swept past him on its headlong dash to the river. Then he crept forward again, lifting his dark lantern ahead of him, probing with his iron-hoed pole.
The opening of the sluice had moved a fair amount of sludge but the location was not promising: a side cavern in which thick slime had accumulated and where a faint light filtered down from the main grating in Kent Street. He was edging forward, one eye on the grating above with his bull’s eye lantern covered, when his pole struck something, soft and yielding. Puddler stopped, edged forward carefully, up to his thighs in filthy mud and groped with his hand for the thing he had struck. He felt the roughness of cloth, an arm … then a man’s head.
Now Puddler was used to finding the occasional corpse in the sewers: sometimes garrotted and stripped, occasional suicides near the river entrance. But this one was fresh, fully clothed, it seemed, and suggested better pickings than usual. Gripping the arm tightly Puddler walked carefully backwards, dragging the body deeper into the sewer, away from the street grating above. It moved sluggishly but easily enough as the sludge gave out sucking sounds and rushes of fetid air reached his nostrils.
In the darker recesses of the sewer Puddler unstrapped his dark lantern from his chest and lifted it high, opening the shutter. Leaning against the ledge at his back he gripped at the collar and heaved. There was a sluggish, reluctant swirling in the mud and the head appeared, hair plastered down, mouth choked black with muck, the face unrecognizable as human in the filth that encrusted it. Puddler laid aside his pole, propping the lantern on its hook, and then he knelt in the mud up to his chest, while his fingers searched through the clothing, the pockets, the vest. He found a handkerchief, keys, some coins and pushed them into the tattered canvas bag on his back. There was a ring on the left hand: it slipped off easily enough where the hand had been gnawed at by rats. His groping fingers found a snuff box in the side pocket and it followed the coins. There was a watch chain, and he eagerly followed it until he encountered the watch itself. It was a hunter: he knew that if he was lucky, it would be gold and that would fetch a pretty penny.
There was little else. He groped and searched blindly, turning the heavy body over and over in the thick mud, but at last, reluctantly, he gave up. It was time to strip the body, because the jacket, shirt and trousers, boots, all could be sold. It was a difficult job, turning the inert body over and over in the cloying filth but at last it was done and there was a satisfying weight in the bag on his back, and the canvas apron at his waist. He picked up his pole, disengaged the lantern. Then he went on his way, stepping aside from the man’s body as it sank in the thick slime, to head back down towards the outlet. In a moment he had all but forgotten about the man as he wandered on through the tunnels, picking up the odd piece of old metal, bones, a length of rope.
It had been a good day. He was sure of it. He retraced his steps under the rattle and thunder of the London streets, back to the riverside, and the miasmic air of the Thames. When he emerged, the light was dying and fires glimmered along the landings and in the camps on Jacob’s Island.
Ben Gully sighed softly after Puddler finished his account. ‘So is that it?’
Puddler was silent for a little while, staring at Gully and the threat of the hand fearfully. At last, he shook his head in despair. ‘That’s it, Mr Gully. But I don’t like getting involved in things like this. It’s not my way. You got to understand, I go me own road, I don’t interfere with others, I don’t arsk questions, I just pick up what I find….’
‘The body was under Kent Street, you say.’
Puddler nodded eagerly, stroking his throat with tender, caressing fingers. ‘That’s right. Under Kent Street. But that ain’t necessarily where he started, of course. Could have been washed down. There’s a powerful current just there, running from the north side of the street … a main junction—’
‘We’ll have to tell the police,’ I interrupted.
Puddler let out a wail. ‘Mister Gully, I can’t be pulled up before no police! I swear I didn’t do nothing to the—’
‘Shut up,’ Gully snapped. ‘Your name won’t be passed on.’ He glanced at me. ‘The polis, informin’ them … I’ll leave that to you, sir. You can tell them you acted on information received, without disclosing the part played by our young friend here.’ He grinned wolfishly at the boy on the bed. ‘Because he’s going to help us further.’
Puddler moaned lightly. ‘I don’t want to get involved in no peeler business.’
‘He’s going to take me into the sewers,’ Ben Gully said pleasantly. ‘And he’s going to show me just where he found the body from which he took this watch. And he’s going to give me the benefit of all his considerable experience … and show me where the body might first have been dumped into the sewer.’ He glanced at me. ‘And then we’ll see what’s what.’
I need hardly tell you I was happy enough to leave that particular task to Ben Gully.