CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM Dickens stayed at the Splendid Hotel and it was a source of resentment to the locals that, while he had immortalised the Angel Hotel in Bury St Edmunds, Montford had not even merited a mention in The Pickwick Papers. Allegedly, though, he had compared our town to a smile on the face of Suffolk. If that were true, Romulus had declared, Lower Montford was its rotting molar.
Upper Montford boasted tree-lined squares and well-kept gardens. Lower crammed its mean rows of terraced houses into narrow winding streets, many of them not even cobbled. The lunar illumination had been dimmed to half-moon-power, so Friendless stopped to light the lamp on the front edge of the roof. I hoped that it helped him and, more importantly, Old Queeny to see the way because it did little for me other than improve my view of her hind quarters.
We left Monastery Park and crossed Salvation Road to where Lower Montford stood, grim medieval hovels leaning across the roads, some so badly tilted that you could have stepped across from one third storey to another if you were not encumbered by skirts.
‘She dint like it here,’ Friendless told us, though I suspect it was more the driver than his mare who was nervous for Old Queeny plodded placidly down the first street without a moment’s hesitation.
I could not say that I blamed him, for I had not heard all sorts of reports about the place, only bad ones. Inspector Stanbury of the Central Suffolk Police Force had told me that he never sent a solitary constable in there and, if there was the slightest hint of trouble, they went in fours. Sergeant Whyte, who had ventured in alone five years ago, had never been seen since despite a hovel-to-hovel search.
‘Duck your head,’ Friendless advised himself as he passed under a cockeyed balcony, but still almost forgot to do so.
We came to a sharp left turn quickly followed by a sharper right and a long, winding way traversed by alleys, some of them hardly wide enough to walk along. A few doorways were open, but little or no light came from the dwellings and the inhabitants stood or sat on their front steps watching us sullenly.
Under Gerrund’s instructions we headed zigzagging towards the centre, or so I trusted, for I had soon become disorientated by the frequent changes of direction. The town was not so much a warren as a maze within a labyrinth, and had I been dropped off there I would have been hopelessly lost. To make matters worse our route had been made more complicated by our having to go back on ourselves when the way was blocked where the flint and mud wall of a cottage had collapsed across it.
‘One day they will light these streets,’ I forecast with more hope than confidence, it being unlikely that any company would go to the expense of laying pipes for the impecunious inhabitants.
‘They’d do better to tear them down,’ Gerrund grumped and banged on the roof with his cane. ‘Next cockle, driver,’ he called.
Friendless was a good cabby but his mother, not content with giving him such an unappealing first name, had let him pick up a hot coal to teach him a lesson when he was a toddler and it had cockled, or withered, his left hand. This, however, proved to have one advantage, for Friendless was greatly handicapped in his profession by his inability to distinguish left from right.
‘Are you sure?’ I checked because I had an impression that we were going back on ourselves.
‘I think so,’ my man said less positively than I had hoped. ‘I don’t normally come this way.’
He is lost, Ruby asserted. Hopelessly lost.
‘Who goo there, Jam?’ a man asked from the shadows.
‘Uppers,’ another, presumably Jam, replied and I made out two silhouettes in a first-floor window.
Anyone not from Lower was presumed to be an Upper or, worse still, a foreigner, which was anybody from outside Suffolk.
‘Heave a brick at ’em.’
‘If you hit Mr Gervey you’ll be wearing your faces inside out,’ I warned, unsure what that meant but hoping that it sounded menacing.
‘Wha’?’ Friendless asked.
‘I will,’ Gerrund confirmed in a high, presumably Gervey-like pitch. Unlike me, he had actually met the man.
‘Crick me!’ the one not Jam exclaimed.
‘Gervey int…’ Friendless began.
‘We do joke,’ not Jam explained unconvincingly.
‘Tha’s right,’ Jam confirmed and the figures disappeared, their boots clumping on bare boards.
I used that trick in The Haunted Oak, Ruby complained.
Yes but I have the copyright – for all the good it has done me.
‘Gervey int here,’ Friendless declared in confusion, but by then their footfalls were fading.
‘He was make-believe,’ I explained as we continued.
‘No he int,’ Friendless argued, ‘I see him twice more than twice.’
‘Uncockled,’ Gerrund called and we swung to the right.
‘I thought we came up this street five minutes ago,’ I speculated; that dead mongrel looked familiar.
‘You mean you think it five minute ago or we do it five minute ago?’ Friendless sought to clarify.
‘Yes,’ I replied and left him to puzzle it out.
‘I’m sure this is the right street,’ Gerrund declared in a way that made me think he was not sure at all. He craned forward and screwed up his eyes in an effort to see better, but I never found that worked and it did not seem to help him either. ‘Nearly,’ he modified his claim.
I listened for a moment.
‘It sounds promising,’ I conceded.
Though not especially enticing, Ruby opined.
There was a burst of light twenty yards ahead and a swell of noise so raucous that it was difficult to judge if the occupants were having a celebration or a riot.
‘It’s probably just a fight,’ Gerrund failed to reassure me as we edged to a halt. ‘They get a good few of those.’
A sea of light gushed from the doorway flushing a dishevelled woman out onto the street. She floundered in the current, wading unsteadily to the shore and stumbled into the shadows. The door slammed and we were in near darkness again. The sky was even more overcast by now, so I was glad to see the yellow flame of a lamp high on the wall ahead.
We came to a halt.
‘That’s it,’ Friendless announced through the hatch.
‘But we still have ten yards to go,’ I objected.
‘On your foots,’ he told me. ‘I dint see it but old Queeny do.’
Gerrund leaned over the flap and sideways.
‘There’s a trench,’ he announced, ‘going straight across.’
‘Oh good,’ I breathed.
‘Int good at all,’ Friendless corrected me. ‘It’s blimmid bad. I’ll have to back out backward and the horse as an animal int constructed to do tha’.’ He spat into the night. ‘Her face forward it do.’
‘Is there not another way round?’ I enquired.
‘No,’ our driver stated flatly. ‘Faces alway face forward.’
‘There is,’ Gerrund replied. ‘But we would have to go back and around the town and come in on the other side. It would take the worst part of an hour.’
He adjusted his hat a fraction. It was dyed emerald too – one of at least six different coloured bowlers that I could recall seeing him wear.
‘Bother,’ I muttered.
‘You think so?’ Friendless quizzed me. ‘It’s more than a bother. It’s a blimmid bother.’
Gerrund drew a safety lantern out of his satchel, raised the glass chimney and struck a Swan White Pine Vesta, the flare briefly dazzling us. He lit the wick and lowered the chimney again, blowing out the match and snapping it to be extra sure before tossing it away. Neither of us would forget our visit to Kelham St James, where he had ignited the methane from a cesspit, blowing up a derelict dairy and almost us in the process. My eyebrows had taken months to recover from that experience and I was not sure that my lashes would ever uncrinkle again.
Friendless pulled the cord to let us out and Gerrund, being on my cockle side, went first.
‘Mind your step, Lady Violet,’ he warned, and I saw that there was no pavement and that the gutter was overflowing with excrement.
I wrinkled my nose, unconvinced that the slurry was all of animal origin and took the hand he proffered, my own hand enveloped by it. Down onto the board I clambered and raised my skirt a few inches to skip over the channel, only saved from slithering onto my back on the slimy cobbles by my man’s steadying grab of my sleeve.
‘Begging your pardon.’ Gerrund released me.
‘I would have been more affronted if you had let me fall,’ I assured him.
‘If he had you do come a cropper,’ Friendless explained.
‘The only way over is that plank,’ Gerrund informed me.
It was probably the first time that the rough-hewn length of lumber he pointed to had been dignified with such a title. It looked like a clumsily split telegraph pole.
‘Oh marvellous,’ I sighed.
‘Marv’lous?’ Friendless interjected. ‘You int seen many a piece of timber to think tha’ one a marvel.’
‘One day I shall explain sarcasm to you,’ I promised and he cocked his head.
‘Sarsasm? Who’s tha’ then? Somethin’ to eat?’
‘Quite so,’ I agreed because it was easier to do so.
‘Sounds French.’ Friendless spat again. He was good at doing that. I had seen him hit a costermonger in the eye from at least fifteen feet when the man was blocking our way with his cart.
A bottle smashed on the wall alongside us and Old Queeny shied.
I knew I should have brought a squad of burly constables, Hefty huffed, but I was not sure that I had room for any more in my head.
‘You cannot wait here,’ I told our driver.
‘I can,’ he argued, ‘bu’ I’m toasted on toast if I do.’
‘If you wait by the park gates I shall send for you,’ I said.
‘How?’ he demanded, but I did not know the answer to that one.
‘Let milady worry about that,’ Gerrund told him with unwarranted confidence, and I certainly would.
‘Will you be able to find your way?’ I worried.
‘No,’ Friendless replied cheerfully, ‘but Old Queeny do. Like a homing pigeon she is… only she int got no wings.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Or feathers.’ Friendless triple-clicked his tongue and she began to edge backwards.
‘Safe journey,’ I wished him.
‘Int safe at all,’ he contradicted me, edging away.
There must be other drivers who will come out at all hours without notice I pondered, but there were probably not many and Friendless was one of the few who would venture into the Lowers, let alone at night.
‘And she dint lay eggs,’ his voice reached us as he disappeared around the corner.
Gerrund eyed our route warily.
‘I can still fetch him back,’ he offered.
‘Are you frightened?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ he bridled, which was a shame because I was absolutely terrified.
Watch out for the man with no ears, Ruby warned, which was good advice for he was a cold-blooded sadist but he was in one of her adventures and not one of mine – I hoped.