Cora Harrison is the author of many successful books for children and adults. She lives on a small farm in the west of Ireland with her husband, her German Shepherd dog called Oscar and a very small white cat called Polly.
Find out more about Cora at:
www.coraharrison.com
To discover why Cora wrote the London Murder Mysteries, head online to:
www.piccadillypress.co.uk/londonmurdermysteries
The London Murder Mysteries
The Montgomery Murder
The Deadly Fire
Murder on Stage
Death of a Chimney Sweep
The Body in the Fog
Death in Devil’s Acre (coming soon)
First published in Great Britain in 2012
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
Text copyright © Cora Harrison, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Cora Harrison to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 84812 169 0 (paperback)
978 1 84812 205 5 (ebook)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Cover design by Patrick Knowles
Cover illustration by Chris King
For my friends Cath Thompson and Marie Neal who inspired me to investigate the fascinating subject of the underground rivers of London.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER 1
WHY KILL A BEGGAR?
Alfie saw the body just before all hell broke loose in Trafalgar Square.
It was after midnight and the streets were filled with a choking yellow fog, but there was no mistaking the fact that the man sprawled on the ground was dead.
Alfie and his cousin Jack were making their way home after a night’s fishing. They stopped and stared at each other at the sight of the body. They knew who it was. As far back as they could remember, Jemmy the beggar had sat under that statue every day of his life – and now he was dead.
The next moment, there was a sudden explosion and a whoosh of orange flames from Morley’s Hotel, above the post office. All eyes on Trafalgar Square went up to the hotel balcony. Screams rang out and the foggy air was filled with a smell of smoke. Men began to yell and women to shriek. There were shouts of ‘Fire! Get the fire brigade, someone!’
A minute later, two horses pulling the mail van shot out through the archway beneath the hotel. The screams on the balcony were drowned out by yells of ‘Stop, thieves!’, as a crowd of post office men in red uniforms came running out after the mail van.
A policeman in the centre of Trafalgar Square blew a shrill whistle. There was an answering blast from another policeman across the road. A masked man was driving the mail van, lashing the horses on, and the van almost overturned as it wheeled around the statue of King Charles, where Alfie and Jack stood beside the dead body.
A piece of paper fluttered from the hand that held the whip and fell to the ground. Alfie bent down and grabbed it and, as he looked up, the glittering eyes behind the driver’s mask seemed to pierce right through him. Then there was another lash of the whip and a screech of wheels, and the mail van was gone towards the River Thames.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Alfie in a low voice. He had begun to guess what was happening. He knew the man who drove the horses. That scar on the chin was unmistakable. It was Flash Harry himself.
But it was too late.
A policeman’s hands gripped their collars.
CHAPTER 2
TROUBLE
The policeman had a narrow face, a massive bright red nose and a piercing gaze. His eyes moved from the dead body to the two boys. Jack shuffled his bare feet uncertainly and Alfie gazed back with as much innocence as he could manage.
‘Know anything about this?’ The policeman jerked his thumb at the lifeless body on the pavement, lying just beneath the enormous statue of a king mounted on a horse. ‘Any idea what happened to him?’ he asked.
‘No, sir,’ said Jack earnestly.
‘Got kicked by that stone horse,’ ventured Alfie and then he forgot his own joke as something about the body took his attention.
Old Jemmy looked much the same as usual, except for the huge wound on his forehead. He wore the same filthy old coat, three sizes too big for him and the same pair of old boots gaping wide. He had the same ginger moustache and the same ginger beard. And yet, there was something different. Alfie moved a little closer and peered at the face of the dead man. Yes, he thought, that’s strange. But he said nothing.
The policeman did not wait. It was more important to deal with live robbers than dead beggar men, so he released the boys and joined the crowd of whistleblowing, truncheon-waving police who were charging after the stolen mail van. A few shots rang out, but there were no answering shots.
‘I reckon that was Flash Harry and his mob raiding the post office. Let’s get out of here,’ said Alfie to his cousin.
‘And leave him?’ Jack indicated the body on the ground.
Alfie shrugged. ‘Why not? None of our business! The law has seen him. Up to the policeman, now. We’re lucky that he had the robbery to occupy him – otherwise we’d be arrested on suspicion of murder.’
‘You think someone murdered him?’ Jack was reluctant to move. He bent down over the body. ‘He’s been here a while – look at the way the water has run off his body and left little bits of ice all around him. Funny, that! There ain’t been no rain – just fog. Do you reckon it were the post office robbers that killed him, Alfie?’
‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ grunted Alfie. ‘Probably a drunken fight. You know Jemmy. He’d fight with his own shadow.’
‘He didn’t drink,’ said Jack. ‘You remember the time he rescued me from that drunk cracksman? Well, he told me then that he hadn’t had a drink for five years. He said that drink was the undoing of him. He told me that the aunt who brought him up was always drunk and she taught him to drink and that’s what landed him on the streets. He used to warn me to stay out of public houses.’
Alfie didn’t answer. He was busy looking at the piece of paper that had been dropped by the masked robber. It puzzled him. The paper was thick and very white and the edges were scalloped in gold. Costs money, paper like that, he thought. Not the sort of thing that you’d expect robbers or cracksmen to have. There was a sort of mark woven into the paper – letters, were they, perhaps a G and an O twisted together? – that he could only see when he held it up to the nearby gas lamp. It seemed to be a note, though it was not addressed to anyone. The signature at the bottom of the page was just a scrawl, but the message was the strange bit.
Right at the top of the piec
e of paper was the drawing of a clock face. The hands were set to twelve o’clock. Beside it was drawn a slice of moon. Midnight, thought Alfie.
And that was all. No words – nothing.
Alfie’s mind worked quickly. He had learnt to read at the Ragged School, but many people couldn’t. The raid and all the details had probably been worked out beforehand. All the robbers needed was the day and the time.
And today the message had been sent to Flash Harry to tell him that something worth stealing was going by the midnight post.
‘Alfie,’ said Jack urgently, ‘let’s get going. Look at them two men coming over. I reckon they’re part of Flash Harry’s mob. They’re looking at us. One of them is pointing.’
Alfie acted instinctively. Hastily, he screwed up the piece of paper and shoved it into the carved stone pattern of the base beneath the statue beside them.
‘Run!’ he said in Jack’s ear and in a minute they were dodging through a crowd of men who had just come up some steps into Trafalgar Square.
This was a good move. The men were large, tough-looking fellows, and although they allowed the two barefoot boys through, they shouted abuse in strong Birmingham accents at the two mobsters as they tried to push their way past them. Alfie, glancing over his shoulder, saw that he and Jack might escape. The fog was thick and, once away from the gaslights of Trafalgar Square, they could lose themselves in the network of small lanes between there and the boys’ home in Bow Street. They only had to cross the road to St Martin’s church and then they might be safe.
But a horse-drawn bus full of uniformed policemen was blocking their way, closely followed by a second and a third. The wait seemed agonisingly long. Jack lost patience and dived between the second and third buses. Alfie followed him, and in a moment they were both running up St Martin’s Lane.
By the time the last of the three buses had gone, Alfie, glancing over his shoulder, could see that only one man was still behind them. His right hand was stuck into his pocket and Alfie knew enough about gangs to guess that he had a pistol there.
‘Run faster, Alfie!’ Jack shouted, looking back anxiously and Alfie sprinted down the lane after his cousin.
The race was on. The penalty for losing could be death.
CHAPTER 3
HUNTED
Alfie ran as fast as he could. His heart was thudding and his chest was searingly hot as he tried to suck in more air. He and Jack were dead tired. They had both been working all night, pulling up the heavy nets full of twisting eels, carrying loaded boxes from Charlie Higgins’s boat to the stalls at Hungerford market.
Down Long Acre they went. Alfie could hear the sound of Jack’s bare feet slapping on the stone pavement of the street ahead of him, but then he turned into Bow Street and the noise ceased. Alfie stopped. He could run no more. He tried to draw breath, holding onto his knees while he gasped and shook and black dots danced in front of his eyes. As soon as he was able, he looked over his shoulder. The man was gaining on him. His hand had come out from his pocket. It did not hold a gun as Alfie had feared, but a gleam of light from the overhead gas lamp showed the glint of a knife blade.
The next moment, the breath was knocked from Alfie’s body as the man’s weight toppled him to the ground. Alfie wrestled with him like a tiger, though the man was twice his weight. But when he felt the point of the knife prick his throat, he lay quite still. Men from Flash Harry’s mob would not hesitate to kill.
‘What did you do with that letter?’ hissed the man. He was digging into Alfie’s pockets, ripping his already torn shirt wide open.
‘Threw it away,’ gasped Alfie.
‘That’s a lie,’ hissed the man into his ear. The point of the knife dug in a little deeper.
It had crossed Alfie’s mind to tell the truth about where he had hidden the piece of paper, but he decided against it. The mobster would probably drag him back to Trafalgar Square and knife him in a dark corner once the note was secured. Dead men tell no tales was the motto of most of these London mobs – and it applied just as well to dead boys.
Where was Jack? wondered Alfie despairingly and, as soon as the thought had passed through his mind, he had his answer.
A very large and very hairy dog came flying down Bow Street, his barks changing to menacing growls as he saw his master on the ground. He seized the man’s knife arm in his mouth and held it firmly, his lips stretched in a menacing snarl. He looked like a dog that would kill.
The man swore and screamed and let go of Alfie, dropping the knife to the ground. Then Jack appeared from nowhere and picked up the knife, holding it threateningly towards the villain’s throat.
Slowly Alfie got to his feet. He was bruised all over and his heart still thumped. He could feel blood running down his neck but he strove to make his voice sound strong. ‘Now listen, you,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you ten seconds to get out of this place. If you’re still here after that, well, this here dog of mine ain’t had any supper and he’s not choosy. Leg of man tastes as good to him as leg of lamb. So scarper. Let him go, Mutsy.’
Mutsy reluctantly took his teeth out of the man’s sleeve, but he continued to snarl and to growl until the fellow had limped off, swearing loudly. Then he looked up at Alfie and wagged his tail.
Alfie patted the dog’s head. ‘Good job you managed to get ahead and send Mutsy,’ said Alfie to his cousin. ‘That fellow is definitely one of Flash Harry’s mob. I’ve seen him before. They’re probably the chaps that did the post office raid. Lucky I didn’t take that letter with me. I’d say that Inspector Denham will be interested to have a look at it.’
Alfie was beginning to recover and his mouth watered at the thought of the sixpence or even the shilling that they might receive from their friend, Inspector Denham, for information about the post office raid.
‘If it’s Flash Harry’s mob, I’d keep out of this business if I were you,’ said Jack uneasily. ‘They’re a vicious lot – kill you soon as look at you.’
CHAPTER 4
THE GANG
Home for Alfie, his blind brother Sammy and his cousins Jack and Tom was a small, damp cellar down some steps from Bow Street. It was a handy place to live, near to Covent Garden market and the theatre – both good places for the boys to beg, do tricks, sing songs or even pick up a job from time to time. Somehow or other they had managed to pay the rent and find enough food to keep themselves alive in the years since Alfie’s parents died.
First there had been four of them, and then, one day, a shaggy dog with large paws had followed Alfie home from Smithfield meat market and made his home with them. Now it was almost impossible to imagine how they had managed without Mutsy. He protected the boys, guided Sammy all over London’s West End and did tricks which earned the gang money, feeding himself on the rats that swarmed in the old house and through the markets. Best of all, he was a great pet for the four boys who had no other living relations.
‘Poor old Jemmy, the beggar man from Trafalgar Square, has been murdered,’ said Jack to Sammy when they had finished laughing over how Mutsy had arrested one of Flash Harry’s gang. ‘Don’t know who did it, but he was hit on the head with something and it knocked his brains out,’ he added, looking hopefully at Sammy. Jack had a great opinion of Sammy’s brains and the blind boy had solved tricky puzzles before.
‘What do you think, Alfie?’ Sammy turned his face towards his brother.
‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ said Alfie impatiently. ‘I keep telling you, Jack. Jemmy was a quarrelsome type. He was always fighting with someone. Never liked him, myself. Yes, I know, I know, he did you a good turn once,’ he continued hastily as he saw Jack open his mouth, ‘but that don’t alter the fact that he was a nasty fellow.’
‘He wasn’t a bad fellow when you got to know him,’ said Jack stubbornly. ‘He had no luck in life, he said. His parents died when he was seven years old and the aunt that took him was a drinker and the one that took his twin brother Ned wasn’t.’ Jack paused. ‘I think we should do something abo
ut him. Mutsy liked him as well.’
Alfie shrugged his shoulders. It was true that the big dog had been devoted to Jemmy for some reason, wagging his tail madly whenever he caught sight or smell of the beggar man.
‘Well, let Mutsy look into the crime, then,’ he said. ‘There you are, Mutsy, your first case. If you find the murderer, we’ll put a badge on you.’
‘PC Mutsy, the rat hunter,’ said Tom. ‘Anyway, why was that fellow from Flash Harry’s mob chasing Alfie?’
Jack told the story of the raid and how the mail van had been stolen while everyone was distracted by the fire at Morley’s Hotel, and how Alfie had picked up the piece of paper. Meanwhile, Alfie was thinking about the piece of paper that he had hidden in the base of the statue of King Charles. Why was it so valuable to the thieves? Why did they go to the lengths of chasing him through the streets of London in order to get it back?
‘So the paper was to say what time to start the raid?’ said Sammy, as if reading his brother’s thoughts. ‘Flash Harry can’t read so he would need a message in pictures.’ He paused. ‘But the raid had already happened, so why would he need to hold on to a bit of paper?’
‘Dunno,’ said Alfie. And then an idea came into his head. He remembered something about Flash Harry and, funnily enough, it was old Jemmy the beggar who had told him it. His words echoed in Alfie’s mind: Flash Harry keeps out of trouble because he has a hold on so many people. He’ll collect evidence and keep it until he has a use for someone and then threaten to use it against them if he needs them. Blackmail, that’s what it’s called.
So that was why Flash Harry sent one of his mob after me, thought Alfie. ‘I’d say that Flash Harry wanted to keep the note,’ he said, ‘so that he could blackmail the geezer who sent it. Might be someone who works in the post office, maybe even a high-up bloke who would know that something valuable was being sent by the midnight post. Maybe I’ll go and talk to Inspector Denham in the morning.’
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