Arrowood

I waited outside until he had a drink in his hand. Then I strode in and stood at the counter next to him.

‘For you?’ asked the fat bartender.

‘Porter.’

I had quite a righteous thirst and downed half the pint in a single swallow. The old fellow supped his gin and sighed. His fingers were puckered and pink.

‘Troubles?’ I asked.

‘Can’t drink that stuff no more,’ he growled, nodding at my pint. ‘Makes me piss something rotten. Wish I could, though. I used to love a drop of beer. Believe me I did.’

Sitting on a high stool behind a glass screen was a man I recognized from the street outside the Beef He wore a black suit, rubbed thin at the elbows and ragged at the boot, and there was not a hair on his head. His match-selling business suffered on account of his habit of exploding into a series of jerks and tics that made people passing him jump back in fright. Now he was muttering to himself, staring into a half-pint of gin, one hand grasping the other’s wrist as if arresting its movements.

‘St Vitus’s Dance,’ whispered the old man to me. ‘A spirit got hold of his limbs and won’t let them go – least that’s what they say.’

I sympathized with him about drinking beer and we got to talking about what it was like to get old, a subject about which he had much to say. Presently I bought him another drink, which he accepted greedily. I asked him what was his occupation.

‘Chief sculleryman,’ he replied. ‘You know the Barrel of Beef, I suppose?’

‘Course I do. That’s a fine place indeed, sir. A very fine place.’

He straightened his beaten back and tipped his head in pride. ‘It is, it is. I knows Mr Cream as well, the owner. You know him? I knows all of them as run things down there. He give me, last Christmas this was, he give me a bottle of brandy. Just comes up to me as I was leaving and says, “Ernest, that’s for all what you’ve done for me this year”, and gives it to me. To me especially. A bottle of brandy. That’s Mr Cream, you know him?’

‘He owns the place, I know as much as that.’

‘A very fine bottle of brandy that was. Finest you can get. Tasted like gold, or silk or something like that.’ He supped his gin and winced, shaking his head. His eyes were yellow and weepy, the few teeth left in his mouth crooked and brown. ‘I been there ten years, more or less. He ain’t never had one reason to complain about my work all that time. Oh, no. Mr Cream treats me right. I can eat anything as is left at the end of the night, long as I don’t take nothing home with me. Anything they ain’t keeping. Steak, kidneys, oysters, mutton soup. Don’t hardly spend any money on my food at all. Keep my money for the pleasures of life, I do.’

He finished his gin and began to cough. I bought him another. Behind us a tired-looking streetwalker was bickering with two men in brown aprons. One tried to take her arm; she shook him off. Ernest looked at her with an air of senile longing, then turned back to me.

‘Not the others,’ he continued. ‘Only me, on account of being there longest. Rib of beef. Bit of cod. Tripe, if I must. I eat like a lord, mister. It’s a good set-up. I got a room over the road here. You know the baker’s? Penarven the baker’s? I got a room above there.’

‘I know a fellow who works down there, as it happens,’ I said. ‘French lad name of Thierry. Brother of a ladyfriend of mine. You probably know him.’

‘Terry, is that him? Pastryman? He don’t work with us no more. Not since last week or so. Left or given the push. Don’t ask me which.’

He lit a pipe and began to cough again.

‘Only, I’m trying to get hold of him,’ I continued when he’d finished. ‘You wouldn’t have a notion where I can find him?’

‘Ask his sister, shouldn’t you?’

‘It’s her who’s looking for him.’ I lowered my voice. ‘Truth is it might do me a bit of good if I help her out, like. Know what I mean?’

He chuckled. I slapped him on the back; he didn’t like it, and a suspicious look came over him.

‘Bit of a coincidence, ain’t it? You happening to talk to me like that?’

‘I followed you.’

It took him a minute to work out what I was saying.

‘That’s the way it is, is it?’ he croaked.

‘That’s the way it is. You know where I can find him?’

He scratched the stubble on his neck and finished his gin.

‘The oysters is good here,’ he said.

I called the barmaid over and ordered him a bowl.

‘All I can say is he was very friendly with a barmaid name of Martha, least it seemed that way to anybody with their eyes open,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they left together. You ask her. Curly red hair – you can’t miss her. A little beauty, if you don’t mind Catholics.’

‘Was he in any trouble?’

He drained his glass and swayed suddenly, gripping the counter to steady himself.

‘I keep my nose out of everything what happens there. You can find yourself in trouble very quick with some of the things as goes on in that building.’

The oysters arrived. He looked at them with a frown.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘It’s only as they go down better with a little drain of plane, sir,’ he replied with a sniff.

I ordered him another gin. When he’d just about finished off the oysters, I asked him again if Thierry was in trouble.

‘All I know is he left the day after the American was there. Big American fellow. I only know ’cos I heard him shouting at Mr Cream, and there ain’t nobody who shouts at the boss. Nobody. After that, Terry never come back.’

‘Why was he shouting?’

‘Couldn’t hear,’ he said, dropping the last oyster shell on the floor. He held onto the counter and stared at it as if he wasn’t sure he could get down there without falling over.

‘D’you know who he was?’

‘Never seen him before.’

‘You must have heard something?’ I said.

‘I don’t talk to nobody and nobody talks to me. I just do my work and go home. That’s the best way. That’s the advice I’ll give my children if ever I have any.’

He laughed and called over to the barmaid.

‘Oi, Jeannie. Did you hear? I said that’s the advice I’ll give my children if ever I have any!’

‘Yeah, very funny Ernest,’ she replied. ‘Shame your pecker’s dropped off.’

His face fell. The barman and a cab driver at the end of the counter laughed loudly.

‘I could give you a few names to swear as my pecker’s attached and working very well, thank you,’ he croaked back.

But the barmaid wasn’t listening any more; she was talking to the cab driver. The old man stared hard at them for a few moments, then finished his drink and patted his coat pockets. His skin sagged from his bristling chin; his wrists seemed thin as broomsticks under the sleeves of his thick overcoat.

‘That’s it for me.’

‘Could you find out where he is, Ernest?’ I asked as we stepped onto the street. ‘I’d pay you well.’

‘Find another fool, mister,’ he replied, his words slurring in the chill air. ‘I don’t want to end up in the river with a lungful of mud. Not me.’

He glanced bitterly through the window where the barmaid was laughing with the cabman, then turned and stomped off down the road.

Chapter Three

The guvnor’s room was transformed. The floor had been swept free of crumbs, the bottles and plates had vanished, the blankets and cushions straightened. Only the towers of newspapers against the walls remained. He was in his chair with his hair brushed and a clean shirt on. In his hand was the book that had occupied him over the last few months: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by the infamous Mr Darwin. Some years before, Mrs Barnett had become quite enraged by this fellow on account of him seeming to suggest, or so she said at least, that she and her sisters were the daughters of a big ape rather than the generous creation of the good Lord above. She’d never read his books, of course, but there were people at her church very against the idea that the good Lord hadn’t made a woman from a rib-bone and a man from a speck of dust. The guvnor, who hadn’t come to a decision on this matter as far as I knew, had been reading this book very carefully and slowly, and letting everyone know that he was reading it along the way. He seemed to think it held secrets which would help him see past the deceptions that were the everyday part of our work. I couldn’t help but notice, too, that another of Watson’s stories lay open on the side-table next to him.

‘I’ve been waiting all morning for news, Barnett,’ he declared, looking as uncomfortable as a hog in a bonnet. ‘I had breakfast many hours ago.’

‘I didn’t reach home until gone two.’

‘She had me up early as she wished to clean the bed somehow,’ he continued with resignation. ‘Very early. But what did you discover?’

I explained what I’d found out, and immediately he had me send the lad from the coffeehouse to find Neddy. Neddy was a boy who the guvnor had taken a shine to a few years back when his family had moved into a room down the street. His father was long dead, his mother a quite disastrous washerwoman. Her earnings weren’t enough for the family, barely enough to pay their rent, so Neddy sold muffins on the street to support her and the two youngers at home. He was nine or ten years or eleven perhaps.

The lad arrived shortly after, carrying his muffin basket under his arm. He was sorely in need of a haircut, and had a rip in the shoulder of his white jerkin.

‘Have you any left, boy?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Just two, sir,’ replied Neddy, opening the blanket. ‘Last two I got.’

I quite marvelled at the magnificent thick black dirt that framed his little fingerbits, and beneath his brown cap could see distinctly the slow crawl of livestock. Oh, for the carefree life of the child!

The guvnor grunted and took the muffins.

‘You’ve eaten, Barnett?’ he declared as he bit into the first. With his mouth full of dough, he gave Neddy his instructions. He was to wait outside the Beef that night until the waiting girl Martha came out, and then to follow her home and bring back the address. He made the boy promise to be extra careful and not to speak to anyone.

‘I’ll get it, sir,’ said the boy earnestly.

The guvnor popped the last bit of muffin in his mouth and smiled.

‘Of course you will, lad. But look at your dirty face.’ He turned to me and winked. ‘Don’t you prefer a boy with a dirty face, Barnett?’

‘I ain’t got a dirty face,’ protested the boy.

‘Your face is caked in dirt. Here, take a peek in the looking glass.’

Neddy scowled at the glass hanging on the wall.

‘It ain’t.’

The guvnor and I broke out laughing; he took the boy to his chest and hugged him tight.

‘You get off now, lad,’ he said, releasing him.

‘Are you going to pay him for those muffins?’ I asked.

‘Of course I’m going to pay him!’ snapped the guvnor, his forehead taking a flush. He pulled a coin from his waistcoat and threw it in Neddy’s basket. ‘Don’t I always pay him?’

The boy and I looked at each other and smiled.

When Neddy was gone, and the guvnor had brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat to the floor, I said, ‘She’s made a good job of this room, sir.’

‘Mm,’ he murmured, looking morosely around him. ‘I must say, I’m not hopeful of a happy solution to this case. I fear what might have happened to the French lad if he’s found trouble with Cream.’

‘I fear what might happen to us if they find we’ve been asking questions.’

‘We must be careful, Barnett. They mustn’t find out.’

‘Can we give her the money back?’ I asked.

‘I’ve given my word. Now, I need a nap. Return tomorrow, early. We’ll have work to do.’

By the time I arrived the next morning, Neddy had returned with the address. The boarding-house that Martha lived in was just off Bermondsey Street, and we were there in twenty minutes. It wasn’t pretty: the white paint on the door was flaked and grubby, the windows were misted all the way up the building, and a terrible black smoke poured out the chimney. At the sound of shouting inside, the guvnor winced. He was a gentleman who did not like aggression of any flavour.

The woman who opened the door seemed none too happy to be disturbed.

‘Second floor,’ she rasped, turning away from us and marching back to her kitchen, ‘room at the back.’

Martha was every bit as beautiful as the old man had made out. She came to the door wrapped in two old coats, the sleep still in her eyes.

‘Do I know you?’ she asked. The guvnor drew in his breath: she had a resemblance to Isabel, his wife, except younger and taller. The long bronze curls were the same, the green eyes, the upturned nose. Only her slow Irish drawl was unlike Isabel’s fenland lilt.

‘Madam,’ replied the guvnor, a quiver in his voice, ‘apologies for disturbing you. We need to talk to you for a moment.’

I looked over her shoulder into the room. There was a bed in the corner and a small table with a looking glass on it. Two dresses hung from a rack. On a chest of drawers was a neat pile of newspapers.

‘What is it you want?’ she asked.

‘We’re looking for Thierry, miss,’ replied the guvnor.

‘Who?’

‘Your friend from the Barrel of Beef.’

‘I don’t know no Thierry.’

‘Yes, you do,’ he said in his friendliest voice. ‘We know he’s a friend of yours, Martha.’

She crossed her arms. ‘What do you want him for?’

‘His sister employed us to find him,’ replied the guvnor. ‘She thinks he might be in trouble.’

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ she said, and made to shut the door. I managed to get my boot in the way just in time. Her eyes dropped to my foot, then, seeing we weren’t to be budged, she sighed.

‘We only need to know where he is,’ I said. ‘We aim to help him, is all.’

‘I don’t know where he is, sir. He don’t work there no more.’

‘When did you see him last?’

A door slammed above and heavy footsteps began to come down the dusty stairs. Martha quickly pulled her head back into the room and shut the door. It was a tall man with a prominent, bony jaw, and by the time I recognized him it was too late to turn my head away. I’d seen him hanging around the Barrel of Beef when we were working on the Betsy case four years before. I never knew what his job was – he was just there, all the time, lurking and watching.

He glared at us as he passed, then stamped on down the stairs. When finally we heard the front door open and shut, Martha appeared again.

‘I can’t talk here,’ she whispered. ‘Everyone works in the Beef. Meet me later, on my way to work.’

Her green eyes glanced up at the stairs and she paused, listening. A man began to sing in the room along the corridor.

‘Outside St George the Martyr,’ she continued, ‘at six.’

With a final worried look upstairs, she shut the door.

I’d reached the first landing when I realized the guvnor wasn’t behind me. He was still staring at the closed door, deep in thought. I called his name – he started and followed me down the stairs.

When we’d gained the street, I broke the silence.

‘She’s a little like—’

‘Yes, Barnett,’ he interrupted, ‘yes, she is.’

He didn’t speak again the whole walk home.

They had only been married a short time when I first knew Mr Arrowood. Mrs Barnett always wondered how such a fine-looking woman had married a potato like him, but from what I saw they seemed to get on just fine. He made a reasonable living as a newspaperman working for Lloyd’s Weekly, and their household was a happy one. Isabel was kind and attentive, and there were always interesting visitors around their home. I met him at the courts, where I was earning a living as a junior clerk. I would sometimes help him gain certain information for stories he was writing, and he often invited me to his lodgings to have a bite of mutton or bowl of soup. But then the paper was sold to a new proprietor, who installed a cousin in the guvnor’s position and ejected him onto his uppers.

Mr Arrowood had by then some renown for digging up the sort of truths as others would like to have remained buried, and it wasn’t long before an acquaintance of his offered him a sum of money to solve a small personal problem involving his wife and another man. This young man recommended him to a friend who also had a small personal problem, and that was how the investigational work began. A year or so later I found myself also out of work on account of losing my temper at a particular magistrate who had a habit of jailing youngsters who needed a helping hand a good deal more than they needed a spell in adult prison. I was out on my ear without so much as a handshake or a pocket watch, and when the guvnor heard what had happened he searched me out. After an interview with Mrs Barnett, he offered me work as his assistant on the case he was working on. That was the Betsy bigamy case, my baptism of fire, where a child lost his leg and an innocent man lost his life. The guvnor blamed himself for both – and rightly so. He shut himself in his rooms for the best part of two months, only coming back out when his money was used up. We took a job, but it was clear to anyone he’d taken to drink. Since then, cases were irregular and money was always short. The Betsy case hung over us like a curse, but what we’d seen bound me to him as sure as if we were brothers.

Isabel put up with his drinking and the irregular work for three years before he came home one day to find her clothes gone and a note on the table. He hadn’t heard from her since. He’d written to her brothers, her cousins, her aunts, but they wouldn’t tell him where she was. I once suggested he use his investigative skills to find her, but he just shook his head. He told me then, his eyes shut so he shouldn’t see me looking at him, that losing Isabel was his punishment for letting the young man die in the Betsy case, and that he must endure it for as long as God or the Devil pleased. The guvnor wasn’t usually a religious man and I was surprised to hear him say it, but he was about as raw as a man could be after she left and who knows where a man’s mind will go to when he’s left heartbroken and turning it all over night after night? He had been waiting for her to return since the day she left.

Chapter Four

We were late. It was a dirty afternoon, with rain and wind and mud in the streets. St George’s Circus was busy at that time, and the guvnor, whose shoes were too tight, was hobbling along with many grunts and sighs. He’d bought the shoes used and cheap from the washerwoman and complained almost the very next day on account of them being too small for his bloated feet. She wouldn’t take them back so the guvnor, being careful with his coppers, had resigned himself to wearing them until such time as they split open or lost a heel. It was taking longer than he’d hoped.

When we finally got to the church we could see our Martha up ahead, wrapped in a black cloak and hood. She was holding onto the churchyard railing, just inside the gate, her eyes sweeping up and down the street. She was clearly anxious to find us, so the guvnor pinched my arm and hurried on. A crowd was gathered outside one of the cookhouses; as we fought our way through, a shortish man pushed past us from behind and darted away before us, the tails of his old winter coat flapping in the wind, his hat sitting back on his head.

The guvnor swore and grumbled as a coalman dumped a sack from his cart onto the pavement in front of us.

Just then there was a shriek up ahead.

A woman with a baby stood by the church gate looking around frantically as the short man who’d shoved us ran off towards the river.

‘It’s the Ripper!’ she screamed.

‘Get a doctor!’ someone else called.

We both began to run. By now there were many others also rushing to the church gate to see what had occurred. We pushed our way through the crowd and saw Martha lying curled on the wet ground, her hair spread across the flagstones like a spill of molten bronze.

The guvnor let out a groan and fell to his knees next to her.

‘Get after him, Barnett!’ he called back at me as he lifted her head from the path.

I took off, winding and ducking through the crowds. The short man ran across the street ahead of me. His coat, much too big for him, billowed behind, his bandy legs moving at full pelt. He sped to the next intersection. As he turned down Union Street, I caught the side of his face, his oily grey hair stuck to his forehead, a nose with a prominent hook. A minute later, I reached the same corner but was brought up short by a teeming wet mass of people and horses. I couldn’t see him anywhere. I hurried on, my eyes searching frantically for his dark coat in the crowd, my way checked all the time by carts and buses and street vendors, further and further down the road.

I ran blindly, on my instinct, until I saw a flash of black coat turn down a side street up ahead. I pushed my way between the carts to the junction. Ahead of me was an undertaker knocking on a door. There were no other men in the narrow lane. My chest heaving, I turned back to busy Union Street, not knowing which way to go. It was no use. I had lost him.

When I got back to the churchyard the crowd was still there. A gentleman paced up and down the path, shaking his head. The guvnor was kneeling on the floor, Martha’s head cradled in his lap. Her face was ashen, the tip of her tongue resting at the side of her mouth. Beneath the thick black cloak, her white serving blouse was a slick claret.

I knelt and checked her pulse, but could see from the way the guvnor shook his head, by the desolate look in his eyes, that she was dead.

At that moment a constable arrived.

‘What’s happened here?’ he asked, his voice booming over the noise of the crowd.

‘This young woman’s been killed,’ said the gentleman. ‘Just now. That fellow there chased the man.’

‘He ran off down Union Street,’ I said, getting up. ‘I lost him in the crowds.’

‘Is she a streetwalker?’ asked the copper.

‘What has that to do with it?’ replied the gentleman. ‘She’s dead, for pity’s sake. Murdered.’

‘Just thinking about the Ripper, sir. He only did streetwalkers.’

‘She was not a streetwalker!’ barked the guvnor, his face burning with fury. ‘She was a waiting girl.’

‘Did anybody see what happened?’ asked the constable.

‘I saw it all, I did,’ said the woman with the baby, important and breathless. ‘I was standing here, right here next to the gate, when he comes up and chives the lady through her cloak like that. One, two, three. Like that, poor girl. Then he runs off. He was a foreigner, I’d say, by the look of him. A Jew. I thought he was going to do me for afters, but he just run off like they said.’

The constable nodded and finally knelt to check Martha’s pulse.

‘He didn’t have human eyes,’ she continued. ‘They was shining like a wolf, like he wanted to rip me as well. Only thing stopping him was all the people coming over when she screamed. That’s what frightened him off. Too late for her, though, poor little thing.’

The constable stood up again.

‘Anybody else see the incident?’

‘I turned when I heard the girl cry,’ said the gentleman. ‘Saw the chap hurtle off. He looked Irish from where I was, but I couldn’t be sure.’

The constable peered down at the guvnor.

‘Were you with her, sir?’

‘He come along after,’ said the woman.

‘I recognize her from the Barrel of Beef.’ The guvnor’s voice was grey and flat. ‘I don’t know her.’

The policeman took a description from the woman and the gentleman, who agreed it must have been a foreigner but couldn’t agree whether it was a Jew or an Irishman, and then from me. Once he’d sent a boy to the station for the police surgeon, he dispersed us.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked as we trudged back.

The guvnor cursed, ignoring me.

‘Damn Cream to hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’ll kill whoever he wants.’