‘Mr Featherstone,’ said a journalist with a knowing smile, ‘you refer to the whole world. Does that mean your next venture will be beyond these shores?’
Featherstone nodded and returned the smile.
‘It does indeed.’
‘India?’
Featherstone shook his head.
‘Africa?’
Featherstone chuckled teasingly. ‘I leave you to speculate, gentlemen. By tomorrow, everything will be in place. Suffice to say it will be my boldest venture yet.’
‘Will it be solid?’
Heads turned at the voice. A woman’s.
‘Or another of your bubbles?’
The woman was trembling, her voice taut. She addressed those around her with bitter scorn.
‘You are all fools, hanging on his every word. He can afford to lose. Others can’t.’ She turned to address Featherstone again.
‘Others are drawn in and left penniless. You promised my husband silver from a mine in Cornwall. There is nothing in it, not even tin.’
She began to push her way towards him, her voice and anger rising.
‘You boast of benefits for all. Tell me then, where’s the benefit in being widowed!’
‘Gently, ma’am.’ A young man had stepped in front of her, polite but firm.
‘I will not be gentle! It’s my husband who is dead. My husband who lost our money and with it all his hope and pride! My husband who has hanged himself in shame!’
Fists clenched, she made to fight her way past the young man, then began to sob. The journalists scribbled in their notebooks more eagerly than ever.
‘I am sorry, ma’am.’ Henry Featherstone’s voice was strong but kind. Genuine in its concern. ‘There is always risk. I am not King Midas turning everything to gold. Or even silver.’
He did not add that when he’d said his next venture would be his boldest yet, he might have said his wildest. He was risking his entire fortune on three thousand miles of railway line, to run unbroken from Mexico to the tip of South America. As a young man, Henry Featherstone had invested his first pound and made ten. It had been the same ever since: winning, losing. The scale was different, but the thrill never changed. He was currently one of the richest men in England. Next year he might be the poorest. He didn’t care.
‘Come to my office this evening, ma’am,’ he offered, not entirely unaware that the journalists were still writing. ‘And I shall find some way to help–’
‘Don’t insult me with your charity!’ screamed the woman.
She flailed at the young man, who still stood in front of her, striking him across the face. She’d recognized him as the great man’s son and took a small consolation from the blow. Then she broke away through the crowd and ran off.
Richard Featherstone put his hand to his stinging cheek. Concerned friends of his father clustered round. Avid journalists elbowed in front of them.
‘Did you know the woman, sir?’
‘No. But she was wrong to spurn my father. His offer was well meant. He’s no trickster, as you know. And he cannot be held responsible for the irresponsibility of others. Only gamble what you can afford to lose: print that as a warning to all who are tempted to invest.’
‘And this great new venture?’ asked another journalist slyly. ‘Will you give us a hint?’
‘I know nothing,’ said Richard. ‘I never do. Business is my father’s domain. Mine is art. You know that too. It would make a pleasant change for the press to gather in such numbers for the unveiling of a marvel of modern painting rather than only marvels of modern engineering. If you’ll excuse me.’
And he eased his way towards his father.
In Calborn Gardens, Jack had made a decision: he would not tell Mr Jevons what he had heard. He feared to worry him. Worry brought on the cough so badly.
Looking down from the roof, he could see the Shoreys’ son still in the back garden. Ducking low, so the inquisitive boy wouldn’t see him, Jack crept across the rooftops then climbed down a drainpipe at the other end of the row of houses. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d removed himself entirely after an illicit chimney climb to help his master.
It wasn’t until Jack finally found a policeman that he realized he was still clutching the brush on its short pole. He was also covered in soot.
‘Scuse me, sir.’
The policeman turned and looked down at him. The look was suspicious rather than encouraging and it prompted another belated realization. Jack could be getting Mr Jevons into serious trouble: six months in jail for using a climbing boy in a chimney. And not just prison. Hard labour. It would kill him.
‘What?’ asked the policeman.
Jack was struggling before he started.
‘D’you know Nunwell Street?’
‘Why?’
‘Something’s going to happen there tonight.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Murder,’ said Jack.
The policeman didn’t react immediately but then he nodded slightly.
‘Oh yes?’ he said again. ‘And how d’you know that?’
‘I don’t know what number. I didn’t hear – I mean I didn’t…’ Jack knew he was starting to babble. ‘Seventeen or seventy or twenty, p’raps seven D. You don’t always hear things properly – in a dream.’
He added the last word in desperation and as soon as it was out he knew it was the most stupid of things to say. He’d panicked. The result was inevitable.
‘Clear off home and have a wash,’ said the policeman and turned away.
At the end of his working day, Jack’s father, Tony Tolchard, jingled down the staircase of number seventeen Nunwell Street with an impressive ring of keys in his hand.
He looked in at the front office, where Henry Featherstone was back at a desk piled with folders, ledgers and a litter of loose papers. His son, Richard, was perched by the window. Tony didn’t encroach into the room.
‘All locked up?’ asked Featherstone without turning.
Tony placed the ring of keys on a hook beside the door. ‘Yes, sir. Would you like me to fetch anything in for you, sir? For your supper later – a pie, some coffee?’
‘Very kind, Tolchard, but no thank you.’
‘Right, sir. Goodnight then. Goodnight, Mr Richard.’
‘Goodnight, Tolchard.’
As soon as the street door had clicked shut behind his caretaker, Featherstone glanced up at his son.
‘Not staying to protect me, are you?’
‘Protect you, Pa? From what?’
Featherstone grunted, amused. ‘That woman.’
‘No,’ said Richard, standing up. ‘No, I’m not. I have a party to go to.’
His father grunted again, mildly sarcastic this time. ‘Another artistic soirée?’
Richard shrugged. ‘Just a few friends at the studio – so I’ll be at home if you need me.’ He moved towards the door. ‘But don’t let her in, Pa. Seriously. She was half mad. If she had a weapon–’
Featherstone laughed. ‘I hope she does come,’ he insisted. ‘The silver mine was a small but spectacular failure. I should like to help.’
‘Don’t let her in,’ repeated Richard.
‘Goodnight,’ said his father firmly, taking the keys from their hook and following his son to the street door.
Richard heard the key being turned and the two heavy bolts being slid firmly into place even before he’d reached the pavement.
Henry Featherstone returned to his desk. He enjoyed working late, locked in, undistracted. He would be too excited to sleep anyway. Time enough for that when everything was finished. Tomorrow the final visit to the bank. The final signature. All or nothing.
It was almost dark, gas lights illuminating the autumn dusk. Jack hadn’t gone home as the policeman had told him. He couldn’t. Nunwell Street filled his mind. Eventually he had found it, in the business area of the city, where the streets were lined with banks and offices. Further west the markets and theatres would be filling up with people out to
enjoy themselves, but the business area was almost deserted.
Jack walked along the street, surveying the office frontages and their numbers: odds on one side of the road, evens on the other. There was no seven D and no seventy. The evens finished at eighteen, so there was no twenty either. Seventeen then. It must be seventeen.
He retraced his steps. Number seventeen had ground-floor windows behind railings on either side of its front door. The window on one side was heavily curtained, that on the other side was simply dark. The entire building looked blank-faced and devoid of life, like the rest of the street. Jack was seized with sudden doubt. He dithered then walked on. If he met another policeman he would try again. But there was no policeman. At the next junction he halted. Leave or stay? Somehow he couldn’t leave, any more than he could bring himself to try knocking at the door of number seventeen. Instead he found his way round behind Nunwell Street.
The back wall of the long terrace of offices rose sheer from a narrow lane, with not even a waterspout near number seventeen, but at the end of the terrace Jack found a drainpipe. He shinned up without difficulty, two storeys to the roof, then made his way quietly across a number of ridges and valleys, counting carefully as he went. He hardly expected to find a murderer lurking but at least from up here he could survey the street from end to end and still make himself heard if a policeman did appear.
In the valley above number seventeen, towards the rear of the building, his toe stubbed against a broken tile. Crouching, he found several others loose. Carefully, he picked one up, to see if there was a hole underneath.
As he did so, he was knocked sprawling on his face by a heavy blow to the head.
2
The Impossible Crime
Jack could hear a noise. He stirred stiffly, feeling cold and wondering where his blanket and pillow had gone. He opened his eyes and could see sky: a few stars above the milky cloud. A clock was chiming. Jack remembered where he was and sat up, putting his hand instinctively to his throbbing head. He felt blood, sticky and congealing.
The clock stopped chiming. At least eight o’clock, perhaps later. Had the thing happened? Had someone actually been killed beneath the roof he’d been lying on? After the chimes there was utter silence. Who or what had hit him? Surely he would have heard someone behind him on the roof. He looked around now as he got gingerly to his feet. The tiled valley was dark and still. Jack felt wobbly. He wanted only to go home. He tripped over the loose tiles but paid them no heed.
As he began shakily to descend the drainpipe, he remembered where home now was.
His father was waiting for him, impatient, clearly ready to go out.
‘Where have you been?’
For an instant Jack thought of telling him everything but he didn’t get the chance to even start.
‘Get yourself cleaned up sharpish,’ ordered his father. Then, being met only with a look of confusion, he became angry. ‘What’s the matter? All that soot getting in your brain? It’s your birthday, remember. A celebration. Wash yourself and put on a clean shirt. Show a bit of life, boy, I’m waiting to spend money on you!’
There was a bucket of water beside the wash bowl. Jack splashed some in and slowly peeled off his shirt. Two minutes later he was being marched through the streets towards the Cap and Cockerel public house.
Tony pushed open the door and thrust Jack inside. The heat and noise battered him and he stepped back, but Tony took his arm again, holding it tight as he wormed his way between the laughing, shouting drinkers. One of the barmaids seemed to know Tony and served him before others already waiting.
‘This is him then, is it?’ she said, regarding Jack as she drew beer from a tapped barrel.
‘This is him. This is my son, Jack. Twelve years old today.’
‘A man tomorrow then, eh?’
‘And a fine man he’ll be,’ proclaimed Tony, not just to the barmaid but to the drinkers around him. He wanted a party; to be everybody’s friend. Jack was his excuse. He dropped a handful of gold sovereigns on the bar and pushed them extravagantly towards the barmaid.
‘Let’s make a splash, Evie. Drinks for everyone.’ He gestured at those pressed around him. ‘Champagne if they like, so long as they drink a health to this young man.’
He gripped Jack tightly round the shoulders and with his free hand thrust a mug of beer at his face.
‘Get this down, boy,’ he ordered, as if it were medicine.
Jack was still staring, astonished, at the heap of sovereigns. The barmaid swept them up smartly without counting.
‘Where’d you get all that money?’ asked Jack, who never before had seen more than two sovereigns together.
‘What?’ asked Tony, lowering his head to Jack’s level.
Jack tried to shout above the din. ‘The money?’
‘Mind your own business,’ replied Tony. ‘Happy birthday.’
He raised his own mug and turned to his new friends, eyes shining.
‘Happy birthday to Jack!’ he cried.
And everyone agreed.
Jack decided after the first gulp that he didn’t like beer. It was thin and sour and, despite being liquid, somehow made his mouth dry. Soon, it was also doing unpleasant things to his stomach: swelling it to bursting point and beginning to give it cramps. But there was no escape. One pint followed another.
‘Enjoy yourself! Enjoy yourself!’
With each mug planted in Jack’s hand, his father’s beaming face loomed larger in front of him. His breath became sourer than the beer itself; the bright, excited eyes became glazed. He began to sway and lurched to a seat against the wall, starting to talk loudly to a woman he’d never met.
Before Jack could decide whether he should join him, his stomach finally rebelled and forced its contents upwards. In a panic, Jack stumbled to the door and out into the street. There were people outside and, rather than be sick in front of them, he tottered as far away as he could before vomiting in the gutter.
He collapsed, clammy and cold, and instinctively clung on to the pavement as the world slowly revolved, like a tilting plate trying to tip him gently off. Jack managed to get to his knees, then his feet. Still the world revolved. He stood swaying, unsure where the Cap and Cockerel might now be and with a dread of returning to it. The mere thought of more beer made his gorge rise.
Jack staggered off down the street, using a wall to keep himself upright, then thought he recognized a turning that would lead home and aimed towards it. As he stepped into the road, he smelt warm horse then heard wheels and a great curse of alarm before something with legs knocked him over.
He lay in the revolving dirt and remembered the roof in Nunwell Street. Could he have been hit by a horse there too? Then he was sick again and knew the vomit hadn’t missed his clothes this time. It didn’t seem to matter. Someone was floating above him. Then someone else.
‘Dear, oh dear,’ said a voice. ‘This won’t do, will it.’
It was the second time Jack had woken up that night and he hadn’t been to bed once.
This time he was in a room of some kind, with a stone floor. Neither his father’s lodgings nor the Jevons’ house had a stone floor. There was a horrible smell and his shirt was sticky. He realized the stickiness wasn’t blood this time, just as he realized that the throbbing in his head had moved from the back to the front. He tried sitting up and was relieved that the stone floor didn’t revolve. That was something. His thigh felt bruised. He remembered the cab driver’s horse in the street.
‘You stink.’
The voice made him jump. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, helped by a pale light through what seemed to be a small square hole in a door. Someone was sitting hunched in the opposite corner of the room.
‘You been sick twice.’
It was a girl’s voice. She sounded disgusted rather than sympathetic. Jack could hardly blame her.
‘I was on a roof,’ he said, working his parched, foul-tasting mouth to see if he could still speak. ‘In Nunwel
l Street. Because I heard a murder being planned. And I got hit on the head… Then my father took me to a pub.’
‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Well the last bit’s plain enough.’
‘The rest’s true as well,’ protested Jack.
‘Can you stand up?’ The girl herself was on her feet now. She crossed to Jack and helped him to his feet. ‘Only you’ll be more comfortable not lying in your sick.’
She led him to the wall and sat him down again. Then she went to a bucket of water that Jack could hear rather than see and came back with a soaked cloth, which she wiped roughly down his face and chest. Jack gasped at the shock of cold water.
‘Lean forward.’
He did as he was told and the girl swabbed his neck as well, before returning to the bucket for a fresh clothful and repeating the whole process.
‘Can’t drink the water now,’ she said, ‘but at least you’ll smell better. Try and sleep. I don’t think you’ll puke no more.’
Jack leant back against the wall, not minding the clinging wetness of his shirt. He felt hollow and light-headed but refreshed.
‘Where are we?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Clink, of course,’ said the girl. ‘A crusher brought you in.’ She wasn’t sure he’d understood so translated:
‘We’re in a cell. In a police station.’
Richard Featherstone woke suddenly at dawn, not on a stone floor but in his warm feather bed. He lay for a few moments, thinking of last night’s supper party in his studio downstairs. His friends, mostly artists and models, had certainly enjoyed it, they’d stayed late enough, talking and laughing. The world of art, like the world of business, was buzzing with new ideas. He loved being part of it.
Richard got up and slipped into his dressing gown. Leaving his room, he paused on the landing and tapped at his father’s bedroom door. There was no answer so he peeped inside. The bed hadn’t been slept in.
Scarper Jack and the Bloodstained Room Page 2