Arrowood

The man nodded, his eyes twitching towards the window where a hansom trotted past.

‘Doesn’t she feed you?’

The knuckle in Harry’s gullet rose as he swallowed.

‘I can’t help you,’ he said.

‘We do mean to give you a shilling, Harry,’ said the guvnor, his voice gentle. ‘We’re investigative agents, working for Mr Thierry’s family. They say he’s gone missing. They’re worried.’

Harry continued to stare out the window, unsure whether to trust us.

‘We couldn’t come to the Beef because Mr Cream has a particular dislike for us,’ continued the guvnor. ‘That’s why we sent the boy.’

For another minute, Harry considered it. Then he rose.

‘I can’t help you. Thierry just left. I ain’t heard from him since, and even if I did know something I don’t know as I’d tell you. I don’t want to be mixed up in what ain’t got nothing to do with me.’

Yet he didn’t leave. The guvnor looked at him in silence, his face puckered in thought.

‘We were there when Martha was stabbed, Harry,’ he said at last. ‘She was waiting to meet us. I held her until the constable arrived.’

The cook froze. His eyes filled with brine. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he let me support him as he sat back down.

‘We think that had something to do with Thierry going missing,’ the guvnor went on. ‘We’re going to find out who killed her. But we need information.’

‘You were there?’

‘She asked us to meet her. She wanted to tell us something.’

All of a sudden Harry began to talk quick. He leaned across the table, his voice low as if not wishing Mrs Willows to hear. ‘Something was happening at the Beef,’ he said. ‘Not the usual. Something bigger. I don’t know what for sure, but there was a gang of them in and out of there. Mr Cream asked Terry to go and get a delivery for him last week. I told him not to go but you never can say no to Mr Cream. Not if you want to work there, you can’t. One day they come in, two of them, up to Mr Cream’s office and start wrecking it. We could hear it from the kitchen. Not a one of Mr Cream’s men went up to stop them. Not Mr Piser, not Long Lenny, not Boots. They all stands down next to the front bar, quiet as mice.’

‘Who were they?’

Harry shook his head.

‘Were they American?’

‘And Irish, but that’s all I know. It was secret. They come in and go straight upstairs, never a word to anybody, like they was in charge.’

‘Come, Harry,’ said the guvnor. ‘Think. You must have heard something about them.’

‘There was some talk of them being burglars. You know Mr Cream’s a fence, I suppose? Somebody reckoned they was doing the big houses up in Bloomsbury and so on. The big houses around Hyde Park as well, the ministers’ houses, the embassies too. Jewellery and silver. You know, things easy to move on. That’s where Mr Cream comes in. That’s the whisper I heard. Didn’t hear any names.’

‘Why did they turn over his office?’

He shrugged. ‘Could of been any reason. He swindled them. Let slip something to the coppers. Made a promise he couldn’t keep. Could of been anything.’

‘What did Martha have to do with it?’

‘Nothing, far as I know. Except Mr Piser was always sweet on her. That’s the only connection far as I can see. But she was sweet on Terry. Mr Piser, well, he didn’t like it.’

‘Did they have an argument?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Mr Piser never had an argument with no one. Doesn’t talk enough to argue.’

‘Why do you think she was murdered, Harry?’

He drained his coffee and straightened his back.

‘Probably on account of going to meet you,’ he said, holding the guvnor’s eye. ‘That’d be my guess, sir.’

The guvnor looked like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. I don’t know why. He knew it as well as I, knew it the minute we saw the girl lying on the church path. Sure as day we’d gotten her killed.

‘Tell us about Terry’s friends,’ I said. ‘Know any of them?’

‘I only know him from the kitchen. Don’t know what he does outside.’

‘You never talked about his life?’

‘I know he went out drinking, but I couldn’t say who with. Never had the money myself to go out for a spree.’

‘Where did he go? Which pubs?’

‘Sorry, sir. I don’t recall him ever saying.’

I gave Harry his shilling along with a little ticket with the guvnor’s address on it.

‘If you hear anything else.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, standing. He pointed at the pudding. ‘Can I take it?’

‘Course you can. Take it all.’

‘And you won’t tell no one you talked to me, will you?’

‘You have our word,’ said the guvnor. ‘But tell me, Harry. How long has your wife’s drinking been a burden?’

Harry’s mouth fell open.

‘Her . . .’ he began, but seemed unable to continue.

‘You tolerate her so far?’ continued the guvnor, then left his special silence that I knew well enough by now not to fill. He looked kindly at the thin man, who shifted from foot to foot. Finally, Harry cracked.

‘But how did you know? Somebody tell you, did they?’

‘Nobody told me, my friend. I saw it in you.’

‘It ain’t easy, sir. I don’t get no sleep, what with the youngsters. But I work such long days, she got no one to discipline her. And the old crow next door leads her astray.’

The guvnor stood and grasped his hand. ‘Such things are sent to test us. I know you have the strength to pass the test, Harry, but you must nourish yourself. You’re too weak to be a proper father. You must eat more.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry, his eyes on the floor, ashamed.

‘Thank you for your help.’

When he was gone, we stood and wrapped ourselves up in our coats. The sky was clear, but though it was summer the air was cold. Mrs Willows cleaned and swept and turned out the lamps.

‘How did you know about his wife?’ I asked as we stepped out onto the pavement. On the other side of the road a copper walked his beat.

‘I sensed it, Barnett.’

‘Give over. How did you really know?’

‘How much do you think a junior cook makes? Thirty shillings a month? Forty? It’s enough to feed his family and pay for their room without him starving himself. Yet he steals food and risks a job that he badly needs. It must mean his money’s going elsewhere. He doesn’t have the money to go drinking himself, he told us that much. So where?’

‘Plenty of other places,’ I said. ‘Gambling debts, maybe.’

‘Too sensible for that. He was very careful in what he told us until we gained his trust. That doesn’t speak of a gambler. But did you see how he looked away when confessing his wife was alive? Did you notice how he changed the subject when I asked if she fed him?’

‘She might have been bed-bound. She might have been put away.’

‘He would have told us if she was ill. There’s no shame in illness – half of London is ill. Drinking was a guess, Barnett. I admit it. But this city is drowning in drink. It was a good guess.’

‘A lucky guess.’

He laughed.

‘I’m a lucky man, Barnett. In some respects.’

As we wandered back through the early morning streets, past the piles of bodies wrapped in rags outside the workhouse and the cab station where an old fellow swept up a great pile of horse manure, he laughed again. His hollow laugh echoed in the quiet street like a thunderclap.

Chapter Seven

I arrived the next morning to find Ettie in a considerable fury.

‘Were you out drinking with him?’ she demanded. ‘He hasn’t been home since yesterday!’

‘No, Ettie. I wasn’t.’

It seemed as if the room had grown in size since the last time until I realized that all his stacks of newspapers were gone.

‘Did he go to a woman? Is that what he did?’

‘We met a man about the case around midnight. I parted with him at the corner of Union Street, not five minutes from here. He said he was going home.’

‘The truth?’ she asked sternly.

‘The truth.’

She looked me steady in the eye, her nostrils flaring with each intake of the fresh London air.

‘I see,’ she said at last. ‘Perhaps he’s been garrotted, then. It would serve him right.’

I shook my head. ‘There’s a place he goes when he’s upset. An all-night oasis, he calls it. I think he’ll be there.’

Ettie raised her eyes and sighed.

‘What’s upset him this time?’

‘He blames himself for the death of the serving girl. The man we questioned last night said as much. I reckon he wouldn’t have taken it half as bad if the girl didn’t remind him of Isabel, though. You know, he held her off the ground until the police surgeon arrived – wouldn’t leave her on the wet path. He near enough wept in front of the crowd.’

She thought for some time.

‘Has he been drinking since Isabel left?’

‘Not constant. Occasional. Not constant at all.’

She shook her head with impatience. ‘This city is awash with drink. Bottles and jugs are the soldiers of Lucifer, Norman. The poor are in its thrall, according to Reverend Hebden. The working men drink up the children’s food and batter each other and end up standing in the dock. The women scream and fight. They lose their husbands and walk the street. The Ripper was God’s punishment for the drink, there can be no doubt about that. Chinese gin is the latest thing, did you know? And good men like my brother fall into its arms at times of vulnerability. You do not drink yourself, I hope?’

‘In moderation.’

She nodded, stooping to pick up a feather from the floor.

‘We have a fight on our hands, Norman. I’m with Reverend Hebden. The city’s been a monster to the poor. Have you read the accounts of Charles Booth?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘He says it all. We’re currently ministering to a filthy place called Cutler’s Court. Have you heard of it?’

I shook my head. We stood in the middle of the room, facing each other. She held her back straight, her arms crossed. Her face was solemn as she explained:

‘Over four hundred people living in twenty small houses, and on each side a slaughterhouse. Ten souls asleep in each room. One standing pipe for water and two latrines. Can you imagine? And everywhere you look are piles of oyster shells and bones.’

I could imagine. I had lived in such a place myself not twenty years before. I knew this city. I knew all its evils and all its games.

‘All the dirty trades surround these quarters,’ she went on. ‘The waste from the slaughterhouses sinks into a ditch which runs through the centre of the court. And this is where they empty their toilet pans. The stink’s an insult to Jesus, Norman. The whole court is owned by one man who refuses to install more sanitation. One landlord. But we are there.’

Ettie spoke with passion, and for the first time I caught sight of the spirit which drove her. I felt I understood her a little better for it. She looked at me in silence, expecting an equally strong reply, but I knew that on this subject I’d have to fail her. Though I’d left the court-dwellers behind long ago, I couldn’t talk of them as strangers.

‘What do you do there?’ I asked instead.

‘We campaign for improvements. We help. We pray for guidance. There’s a programme that our organization follows across London – we teach basic hygiene; we hold prayer meetings and provide medicines. The Ladies’ Association for the Care and Protection of Young Girls work closely with us. Do you know them?’

‘I’ve seen the women about town.’

‘I had little sense of the scale of the problem before I came here. You know that William and I were raised in . . .’ She hesitated, and a flush came to her cheek. ‘That is to say, our father had means.’

‘Yes, I knew that, Ettie.’

‘Of course. Anyway, half the women in the court work as prostitutes. In some families both mothers and daughters earn money this way. We try to help the younger ones. There are sanctuaries they can go where they’re taught to do useful work. We try and save them before it’s too late.’

‘Noble work, Ettie.’

‘It isn’t easy. The men don’t like them to be saved, so there’s trouble sometimes, but the poor are our burden and our responsibility. Such it says in the good book, Norman. The war is here. The war is in our backstreets and alleys.’

Her chest heaved with passion beneath the black bodice of her dress. Her forehead was red, and I was pleased when she hesitated and drew a slow breath. I didn’t want to hear any more about the people of the court, my people, for all the bad things they did I had done myself, or watched, or encouraged. I knew everything she described, but I knew it from the other side.

‘But now I worry for my brother. You know where he is, you say?’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll bring him back.’

‘Very good.’ She turned to the stairs. ‘And tell him to bring some muffins. Hot ones, mind. Tell him to pay the full price.’

There was only one other punter in the Hog that morning, a great lascar with a knife in his belt and his hair tied back like a pirate. He lay asleep on a bench by the fire, snoring, his mouth hanging open. A fat woman stood by the counter, rinsing out glasses in a tin bucket. The place stank of tobacco smoke and the spilt beer that lay like a slick over the stone floor. The guvnor was sat upright at a table in the corner, his back to the door. In his clasped hands was a bottle of porter. It was only when I got up close I could see that his eyes were closed. I lay my hand on his shoulder and shook him. He groaned and protested.

‘I’ve instructions from your sister to return you,’ I said.

He opened his bleary eyes for a second to look in my direction, then immediately let his head fall onto the table.

I put my arm under his and hauled him up. He was heavy. He was heavier each time.

The woman tutted and sighed as I struggled with his leaden carcass.

Slowly, his feet began to shuffle in irregular steps. He groaned again and wiped his mouth; his eyes opened to slits; his red face puckered up. He belched in my ear. But at least he was walking, after a fashion.

‘Lovely making your acquaintance, Hamba,’ he mumbled at the sailor, who continued to snore on the wooden bench.

‘Take him with you, why don’t you?’ said the woman with a laugh.

The guvnor turned and bowed loosely at her.

‘A pleasure, my petal,’ he burbled.

‘I hope you ain’t thinking of leaving before you give Betts the crown you owe her, Mr Arrowood. She made me promise to collect it from you.’

‘Ah,’ he spluttered, fumbling in his waistcoat for his coins, ‘of course, yes.’

The coins spilled onto the floor. I scooped them up, gave the woman a crown, then stuffed the rest into his pocket.

Without letting go of my arm, he bowed once more. When we gained the street he grunted at the sudden light and covered his eyes.

‘Carry me, Barnett.’

‘Walk on.’

‘I’m suffering.’

‘As am I, but I don’t deserve it.’

We plodded and swayed through the busy streets. When we reached his rooms behind the pudding shop, Ettie was sitting upright darning a sock in his favourite chair. A look of great disappointment crossed her face.

‘Do you need help getting him upstairs?’

‘I’m fine, Sister,’ he grunted, only now letting loose my arm and standing by himself. ‘Help me up the stairs, Barnett.’

It was a struggle to get up the narrow staircase, but finally we gained the top and he fell onto his mattress, panting and clutching his forehead. I was breathing heavy myself now.

‘Barnett,’ he slurred as I turned back to the stairs. ‘Is Nolan out of prison?’

‘Out last week.’

‘Go see him.’

I’d decided the very same myself the night before when I guessed the guvnor would be sloping off to the Hog after leaving me, but I didn’t tell him that. It wasn’t our way.

‘Get me the chamber pot,’ he mumbled.

‘Get it yourself,’ I said as I set off down the stairs.

He was snoring before I reached the bottom.

Ettie watched me in despair.

‘One moment, Norman,’ she said, as I reached the door. ‘Did you get muffins as I asked?’

‘I’m sorry. I had my hands full.’

‘Quite so.’

Her mouth turned down in sadness: Ettie enjoyed her food just as much as the guvnor.

‘You must ask Mrs Barnett to come to a meeting,’ she said. ‘Reverend Hebden is always looking for new recruits. She’d find it enriching, I’m sure. I shall tell you the time of the next one.’

‘Thank you, Ettie.’

Her eyes narrowed as a queer noise came from her stomach. Next moment, a light flush came to her cheeks.

‘That’s arranged, then,’ she said, picking up her darning again. We both pretended we hadn’t heard the gurgle in her innards.

Nolan lived in two rooms of a lodging house on Cable Street. He was an old friend of mine from Bermondsey days. His business had always been just the other side of the law, and we often went to him if we wanted to know about things as were happening in the Irish parts of town. A few days ago he’d come out from fourteen moons’ stir for the theft of an overcoat from a Chinaman on the Mile End Road. Now he was back in his old life, fencing carriage clocks and cooking pots to the good women of Whitechapel.

‘You ain’t looking so good,’ he said, as we sat at the table. His wife Mary, his mother, and two cousins had been dispatched to the front room to allow our conference. Despite the sunshine outside, the back room was cold, the light from the window cut out by a taller building not five yards behind. He wore broken spectacles on his nose, one of the arms being a chewed pencil tied on with a thread of hairy string.

‘Apologies for not visiting you in the nick, mate,’ I said. ‘I’ve an aversion to criminals.’

‘Forgiven, Norman. How’s the old boy?’

‘Suffering after a night in the Hog.’

He laughed and slapped his thigh.

‘He never could absorb it. Weak body, that’s his problem. Weak stomach. Now, me old mate, what is it you’re after this time?’

‘You heard anything about a gang of Irish or Americans? Thieving from the big houses in the West End?’

He got up and closed the door. When he came back his smile was gone.

‘I’d leave that one alone, my friend. The two of you don’t want to be asking after them lot.’

‘It’s connected to a case.’

‘Well it might be, but you don’t want anything to do with them. Stay well away.’

‘The guvnor won’t do that. A girl’s been killed. He’s taken it personal. It seems as this gang is connected to—’

‘Don’t tell me any more!’ he barked, his spectacles falling from his face. ‘Did I say I wanted to know?’

I shook my head.

‘Right, here it is.’ He leaned over and collected his eyeglasses from the wooden floor. ‘Those lot are Fenians. You remember them?’

I nodded. Who in the country didn’t remember the Fenians? Ten years ago the city was in a panic for bombs exploding all over the shop. There were stories every day of new targets and plots foiled by the police. Explosives had been planted in the underground railway, London Bridge, even the Houses of Parliament. People were so scared they stopped using the trains. The guvnor himself had written many a story for the paper on the hunt for the skirmishers and the Irish Americans behind it all. They’d brought the fight for Ireland to the heart of England, and all of us who lived here knew it.

‘But I thought they’d given up?’

‘Most of them did, but a few of them went their own way, like. Them as still believe the only thing the British will listen to is war. I heard they were connected to the burglaries in some way. And that’s all I heard.’

‘Names?’

‘I only ever heard one name. Fellow called Paddler Bill. One of the Invincibles, they say. You remember them?’

‘The assassins?’

‘That’s them. He was one that got away, never even named at the trial. Big, red-haired fellow – not as I ever seen him myself. They say he carries the executions of those men with him still. That’s why he keeps up the fight. Killed his brother for informing, so they say. Killed him in a sweet factory. Boiled him up in toffee.’

I shivered.

‘Christ, Nolan. I don’t like this case.’

‘These are people you don’t want to anger,’ he said. ‘Stay well away.’

He watched me as I thought about it, as I wondered if I could persuade the guvnor the case was too much for us. But I knew that was a fantasy: once he gave his word he’d never give up.

‘Why housebreaking?’ I asked at last. ‘What’s that to do with the campaign?’

‘For the money, I shouldn’t wonder. Costs money to fight a war.’

‘And you don’t know any other names?’

‘Don’t know nothing about the others. And before you say anything, I ain’t going to ask around neither. Those lot ain’t afraid of tying a person up and dropping him in the river on a cold night and that’s a fact.’

‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, Nolan.’

He shook his head, jamming his hands in his pockets. A cat appeared from behind the oven and padded up to him, rubbing its side on his trouser leg. He kicked it away.

‘Mary’s Irish, too, ain’t she?’ I asked.

‘She was born here. Her mother and father, they come over after the famine, but they don’t know nothing about these Fenians. Most of them lot’s American.’

‘What does she think of them?’

‘Her cousin Kate’s the one goes to all the land reform meetings. But the whole lot of them’s for a free Ireland. Father was too, before he croaked.’

‘How couldn’t they be, living with you?’

More than once, Nolan had bent my ear on self-government. He’d come over himself during the depression twenty years ago; his brother who stayed behind was thrown into Tralee gaol for helping tenant farmers resist eviction. The more he’d told me about what was happening over in Ireland the more ashamed I was at what my people were doing. The guvnor was with Nolan on this, and that was one of the reasons they’d grown to have such respect for each other.

‘A lot of yours see us as no more than filth,’ said Nolan, nodding. ‘There are plenty of law-abiding Irish round here, mate. Not me, of course, but plenty of others, yet any crime that’s done, they says it’s us. If there’s work we’re the last to get taken on. Our people got good cause to take against you. But listen, Norman. I’ll be for the liberation of my country till I die, but I don’t go along with the bombs. Never have done.’

He crossed his arms and shook his head, and from the look on his face I could see he was about to start up on some more serious talk. But just then the door squeaked open and his Mary’s head appeared. ‘Potboy’s here, lads,’ she said.

Nolan made a noise like he’d been holding his breath. He smiled.

‘You want a drop o’ porter with me?’ he asked.

I had a bit of porter with him and Mary, and then she went out for whelks. Still I couldn’t persuade him to make any enquiries. He was frightened of these Fenians. And Nolan wasn’t usually frightened of anything.

Chapter Eight

There had been an accident outside The Fontaine when we arrived that evening. A horse had fallen over and died, pulling its carriage onto its side. A lady was sitting on a step howling, blood all over her face and a posy of flowers in her hand, while the cabman tried to uncouple the carriage from the horse’s corpse. A crowd had gathered to poke at the horse and stare at the howling woman. The guvnor bent down to her as we passed.

‘Are you hurt, miss?’ he asked, holding out his handkerchief. ‘Here, take this.’

Her crying calmed as she peered through her teary eyes at the guvnor, then at the tattered red cloth. Seeing the tobacco stains and the dangling threads crusted with who knows what, she shuddered and turned away.

He quickly pocketed his rag.

‘Can I send for someone?’ he asked.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed, covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t need your help.’

He tapped his stick against his boots and nodded, a look of sadness on his face. He didn’t seem to know what to do.