When Jack next paused they were not near to any gas lamp or pitch torch. A few lights came from houses where candles were burning on window sills, but that was not what Alfie focused on. It was something far more puzzling.
A faint ghostly light seemed to be coming from a hole below the river bank. Its grey illumination spilled out over the water – just a glimmer because of the fog – but enough for Jack. Immediately he began to swim in that direction.
It was not easy to swim that way. A slight current seemed to be pushing them in the opposite direction – forcing them back out into the centre of the river. It was not much, but Alfie was so exhausted that for a moment he was angry with Jack. What did it matter where they landed? Why swim against a current?
And then suddenly he understood. Water was flowing out of a tunnel on the bank. This must be another one of those underground rivers that the sewers drained into. Alfie felt new life flood into his legs and he kicked out energetically. With hope giving him courage, Alfie was surprised how quickly they reached the tunnel. It was quite shallow in there and after a few strokes, they all stood up in the tunnel entrance.
‘Next time you want to pull my arms out of the sockets, just ask politely,’ said Sammy amiably, rubbing his shoulders.
‘Think yourself lucky that you’re not feeding the fishes,’ retorted Alfie and then remembered that he had last used the expression before Charlie died.
‘Poor Charlie – he’s dead,’ said Jack sadly. ‘That bullet blew a hole in his head. I just looked around and saw it, just a second before the boat overturned. I’ll miss him. He was a very nice man. Got a family too. A wife and three children.’
‘We’ll get the men that done it,’ said Alfie angrily. ‘Let’s get to Inspector Denham as fast as we can.’
‘Where are we now?’ asked Sammy.
‘I’d say that it’s the Walbrook River,’ said Jack after a moment’s thought. ‘Old Jemmy told me about it – it’s the one that comes out near to the Tower of London.’
‘Let’s get moving,’ said Alfie impatiently. ‘We’ll freeze to death if we hang around here. We’ll go up it as far as we can and with a bit of luck we can get out somewhere.’
‘According to old Jemmy,’ said Jack, ‘a man could go anywhere in London and never show his face over ground. The old buried rivers and sewers are like lanes – they all join into each other – that’s what old Jemmy used to say, poor old fellow.’
‘Funny, wasn’t it, Alfie,’ said Sammy, wading through the sludgy water as confidently as he walked down Bow Street, ‘that story of Mick’s. Mick thought he saw the dead body of Jemmy pop up from a sewer!’
‘Mick the Drink – that’s what Grandad used to call him! Who cares what he . . .’ said Alfie impatiently and then stopped. A sudden idea had come to him. He turned it over in his mind as he sloshed through the water, his arm firmly holding Sammy’s elbow.
‘Jack,’ he said slowly. ‘Do you remember when you was telling me that Jemmy never drank? Why was that again?’
‘Because he used to drink too much when he was younger.’ Jack sounded surprised at Alfie’s sudden interest.
‘No, the bit about his aunt and about his twin brother.’
‘That’s right, his parents died when he was only seven and one of his mother’s sisters took him and the other aunt took his brother Ned. He never saw his brother again. He used to say that he, Jemmy that is, had terribly bad luck. It was the wrong aunt that adopted him, that’s what he used to say. Very bitter about it, he was.’
‘No, he didn’t have much luck, did he, poor old Jemmy,’ observed Sammy.
‘That man from the post office seemed to think that it wasn’t the raiders killed him,’ said Alfie, plodding on down the tunnel. It was funny how after a while you got used to the stink and to the slime under your feet, he thought philosophically. You got used to the darkness, too. He had begun to make out the roof and the walls of the tunnel. ‘Did you hear him, Sam?’ he asked. ‘Bristly Eyebrows, I mean. Did you hear him say that?’
‘I heard him,’ said Sammy.
‘But —’ began Alfie.
‘Let’s turn to the left here,’ interrupted Jack. ‘This looks a good big tunnel and it might bring us out near the Tower of London. There’s bound to be a manhole somewhere near there so we can climb out.’
‘I vote we keep down here as long as possible,’ said Sammy. ‘It’s warmer here than outside. My clothes are beginning to dry a bit and the water don’t seem too deep. I’m getting used to the stink now.’
‘Why not? If we just keep going straight ahead we should get to somewhere around Drury Lane,’ said Jack. ‘Should take a couple of hours – it’s slow walking in these places but it’s not somewhere the raiders will be searching. People don’t like these sewers – don’t mind them myself. They’re nice and warm and they’ll be even warmer later on when all the rich folk have their baths and the scullery maids throw down the scrubbing water. Beats going out in a boat, Bert the Tosher used to say. I don’t suppose I’ll be going out in a boat again, with poor old Charlie dead,’ he added in a low voice.
‘But what did you think about what Bristly Eyebrows said, Sammy? Do you think that he was telling a lie when he said that the raiders had nothing to do with Jemmy’s death?’ persisted Alfie. He didn’t want to think about Charlie too much at the moment. It was better to keep his mind on the puzzle of Jemmy’s death. ‘You heard the man. Did you think that he was telling the truth?’
Sammy was silent for a moment and then in a posh voice he said, ‘No, nobody touched Jemmy. I saw him myself, after the raid, when I was going home. He was talking to one of the engineers from Birmingham, the fellows that were examining the pump for the fountains. That’s what he said, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s it,’ said Alfie with a grin. Sammy had got the man’s voice just right. Alfie had forgotten how startled he had sounded, and how his voice had become quite definite when he said that Jemmy was still alive after the raid was over. ‘But then,’ said Alfie, puzzled, ‘how come we found Jemmy’s body before the raid on the post office?’
There was one other little bit of information at the back of his mind, but somehow he could not locate it. It was something significant, something that happened when he and Jack were hiding in the inn’s cellar. He tried to uncover it, but then he decided not to think any more about it for the moment. His first job was to get to Inspector Denham and report what had happened to Charlie and where the robbers – no, murderers – were to be found. He was impatient to claim the reward and then . . .
And then he could put all his energies into solving the mystery of Jemmy’s death.
CHAPTER 22
JACK-IN-A-BOX
After Tom and Sarah returned from the river that night, the boy was in such a state that she hesitated to leave him alone in Bow Street. They stood in Trafalgar Square under a gas lamp with Mutsy at their feet, while Sarah tried to decide what to do.
‘They’re all dead,’ Tom kept saying despairingly. ‘They’re all dead. Jack and Alfie and Sammy, they’re all dead. I’ll be on my own for the rest of my life. I might as well kill myself now and get it over and done with.’
For a while Sarah wondered whether she should offer to stay with him, but that might mean losing her job. Dora could only cover up for her for a short time. If she wasn’t at the inn first thing in the morning, questions would be asked. Her absence during the night would be discovered and she would be dismissed.
‘Come back with me,’ she said eventually. ‘I can hide you and Mutsy in the cellar at the inn. No one goes near it in the morning.’
It was lucky, she thought, as she silently ushered him down the passageway to the cellar door, that she had taken the bunch of keys with her.
She managed to find some sacks for Tom to lie on and she left him curled up beside Mutsy, looking very young and very lost. ‘Don’t you dare stir until I come for you!’ she said, and she stole upstairs to bed feeling sick with worry about the three missing
boys.
‘No one missed you,’ said Dora reassuringly as Sarah got into her nightdress. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah, feeling thankful that Dora sounded so sleepy. In a few minutes the girl was snoring and Sarah was free to think her thoughts and worry about what she was going to do when morning came.
When Dora woke her at seven, she was still half asleep as she scrambled into her clothes and went down the stairs, rubbing her eyes. The Birmingham engineers had not yet appeared but there were a few travellers who wanted to get the early morning stagecoach to Dover and she served them as quickly as she could.
‘You take that tray up to the fellow who’s supposed to be sick,’ she whispered to Dora. ‘He gives me the creeps.’
Sarah hardly knew what she was doing as she went up and down the stairs to the kitchen, carrying tray-loads of eggs and rashers of bacon and steaming teapots. She couldn’t stop thinking about the missing boys. In a way, they had taken the place of the family that she had never known. They were more like brothers to her than just friends.
Sarah’s mother, whoever she was, had dumped her at Coram Fields Foundling Hospital, placing the tiny baby in the crib provided by the charity outside the main door, ringing the bell provided and then disappearing quickly before anyone came to the door.
Most of the babies that were abandoned at this door had been left with something which would identify them if ever the mother was able to reclaim them, but Sarah had nothing – not even clothes. The naked baby had been tucked into the blankets in the crib and left there like an unwanted piece of rubbish. Sarah had no hope that she would ever be retrieved by a mother who seemed to care so little for her daughter.
Sometimes, Sarah envied the boys with their memories of parents, of the grandfather who had loved them all and given them such pieces of wisdom to remember throughout their lives. Mostly, though, she did not allow herself to think about the past, but focused firmly on the future. This morning, however, what with the anxiety about Jack, Alfie and Sammy, and her own exhaustion, she felt near to tears.
‘You don’t look well, Sarah, girl,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Why don’t you go back to bed? Dora will manage the breakfast – I’ll give her a hand if she needs it.’ He spoke roughly but he had a very kind heart.
‘I’m all right, Mr Pennyfeather,’ said Sarah, trying to make her voice sound natural. ‘I’ve just got a bit of a headache. If Dora can manage, would it be all right if I go for a walk in the fresh air?’
‘You do that; nothing more for you to do until we start serving lunches. That Birmingham crowd were up so late that they won’t show their faces until noon,’ said Mr Pennyfeather. ‘Stay out as long as you like, or else have a good lie-down on your bed. This has been a hard week with the hours these fellows keep.’ And he jerked his thumb upwards towards the bedrooms where the engineers were sleeping.
‘Thanks, Mr Pennyfeather,’ said Sarah. She almost felt like crying because she was so grateful for this kind treatment. She would definitely stay working at the inn, she thought. None of her mistresses in the fine houses had ever been as kind to her.
Quietly she stole down to the scullery. Kitty was hard at work so Sarah was easily able to take a few cold rashers of bacon and a few uneaten slices of bread from the dirty plates and conceal them under her apron.
Then she went down to the cellar, candle in hand, to release Tom.
To her surprise, he was just beside the door, his face completely white, when she opened it.
‘There’s a ghost,’ he whispered.
‘What?’ Sarah let the food drop and Mutsy picked it up and neatly swallowed it.
‘Listen,’ said Tom.
Sarah listened. There was no doubt that there was something – some sound coming from the centre of the cellar, from among the beer barrels.
‘Shh,’ she said and blew out the candle.
There was a faint glimmer of daylight coming through the cellar window and it was just enough to see Mutsy, shaggy tail waving frantically, making his way through the barrels in the middle of the room.
‘Just a rat,’ said Sarah reassuringly.
But then there was a creaking sound. Sarah and Tom grasped each other, terrified.
And then a voice.
‘Cor blimey, if it isn’t old Mutsy,’ whispered Alfie.
‘So you’ve turned up again, like three bad pennies,’ said Sarah, as Alfie climbed out of the sewer, hoisting up Sammy behind him, followed by Jack. ‘What happened to you?’ she hissed. ‘Tom was scared out of his wits and Mutsy thought that you were dead.’
‘We’ve found the gang’s hide-out and they’ve got the mailbags with them,’ said Alfie briefly.
‘Poor Charlie Higgins was shot,’ said Jack sadly.
‘They’d have got us, too,’ said Alfie, ‘except that Jack had the brains to lead us into the tunnel where one of them underground rivers empties into the Thames. We’ve been walking through underground sewers and rivers all night. And here we are now, popping up like a jack-in-a-box.’
‘Let’s get you all out of here,’ said Sarah. ‘Wait till I see if it’s clear and then go as quickly as you can.’
They were in luck. No one was around and in a minute they were all walking briskly down Haymarket.
‘You stink!’ said Sarah, wrinkling her nose. ‘You’d better have a wash and change your clothes before you go to the police station.’
‘Not now,’ said Alfie decisively. ‘We don’t want to hang about. What time is it?’
‘Don’t kn—’ began Sarah and then at the clang of the bell from St Martin’s church, she said, ‘That must be half eight.’
‘We’ll wash our legs in the fountain,’ said Alfie as they went along. ‘C’mon lads, can’t have the Lady Sarah turning up her nose at us.’
‘It’s probably just our feet and legs that stink, Sarah,’ said Sammy.
‘The water wasn’t deep and it wasn’t too bad after the flood a few days ago,’ explained Jack as they waded through the fountain and came out shivering.
‘So where are the raiders now?’ Sarah lowered her voice and spoke into Alfie’s ear, but he shuddered and looked around him without reply. He could only think about getting to the police station as soon as possible.
‘The jewellers in Hatton Garden have raised the reward to fifteen pounds,’ Inspector Denham was just saying to his sergeant when the door burst open and five children and one large muddy dog tumbled into the police station.
‘Sir,’ gasped Alfie, ‘I’ve got such news for you.’
‘What’s the matter?’ asked the inspector, half-smiling as Mutsy politely wagged his tail and sat down just next to the inspector’s well-polished boots with the air of someone handing over responsibility.
‘We know where the gang are hiding out,’ said Alfie triumphantly. ‘The post office raiders’ gang.’
‘Come into my office,’ said Inspector Denham. He seemed almost as excited as Alfie, thought Sarah, as they all followed the inspector. Even Mutsy trailed in, seated himself beside the fire and listened with grave interest to Alfie’s story.
When it came to the bit about Charlie Higgins’s death, Jack put his hand in front of his face and Alfie’s voice quivered for a moment. But the inspector jumped to his feet and opened the door to the outer office.
‘Constable, fetch a cab. I’ll go straight to Scotland Yard.’
It took only a few minutes for the cab to arrive, but Inspector Denham had thought the whole matter through by then. Sarah said that she had to go back to work, and the sergeant and constable were told to escort Jack, Tom and Mutsy to the cellar in Bow Street, and if necessary to take any suspicious characters into the police station for questioning. Alfie would ride in the cab to Scotland Yard and tell the whole story on the way.
‘And you trust this boy?’ The room at Scotland Yard was full of policemen, some in plain clothes, others dressed in uniform. Alfie had found it best to keep his eyes fixed on Inspector Denham while he told the story
of how the men in the galley had pulled up the mail bags that had been attached to iron chains.
‘Probably had those chains in place before the robbery,’ one plain clothes policeman had observed. He had a clever look, thought Alfie. Not like those constables at Bow Street who all looked stupid. For a moment, Alfie wondered whether there was any chance of him joining Scotland Yard when he grew up. He would enjoy it, he thought.
Inspector Denham looked at home with them as he nodded in reply to the suggestion. Just as he had done when asked whether he believed Alfie. A man of few words, but Alfie trusted him more than any of the other policemen there.
When Alfie came to the part where Charlie Higgins had been gunned down, there was a murmur of anger throughout the room. The man who looked like the chief of Scotland Yard – he was the one that was giving all the orders and asking most of the questions – quickly jumped to his feet and barked a few orders. Men started to stream out of the room and into a wide-open space at the end of the passageway. There was a large table there and on it was spread an armoury of guns: rifles and pistols, thought Alfie, half-hoping that he might be given one.
‘It’s time for you to go, Alfie,’ said Inspector Denham firmly. ‘You’ve done your work; you must leave the rest to us.’
Alfie thought fast. He didn’t want to be left behind. ‘Best if I go with you, sir,’ he said earnestly. ‘You might miss the house. Very confusing, all those old places down there in the docks.’
There was a slight hesitation at that. Everyone left in the room looked at one other.
‘It might be . . .’ said one man, looking at another. They nodded wisely at each other. Inspector Denham started to look unsure.
‘Could sit well out of the way . . . on the floor of the boat . . . no danger . . .’ This was the chief at Scotland Yard speaking, the geezer that had given all the orders. Alfie began to feel hopeful.
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