by Jean Stubbs
‘All right, all right,’ said Lintott, sick of him, ‘then let’s get down to what you don’t want to swear to. That’s what I’m after.’
‘I have nothing to be ashamed of,’ said Rice, after a pause. ‘I go about the highways and byways, as did Our Lord. I walk the Embankment and look under the Arches of a night-time, and I console and relieve the Dregs of Human Nature.’
‘Something for nothing?’ Lintott asked, knowing.
Mr Rice’s face was as mild and open as that of an honest clergyman.
‘I take in delinquent boys, my good sir, and offer them a home. It’s not all like this,’ he said, indicating the over-furnished room. ‘This is my part of the house. But they are very comfortable, and they join me here of an evening …’
‘When the visitors come?’
‘Well, I do try to introduce my boys to people of substance who can help them make their way in the world. They move on, you know, as they get into their twenties. I can only take a dozen at a time, and when a boy reaches maturity he naturally wants to make his own way. I give them a Bible when they leave me, Inspector, and a little present of money.’ Lost in the image he had created, Mr Rice became rapt. ‘I’ve seen a boy stand here with the tears pouring down his cheeks, thanking me. I do give them a Bible,’ he said anxiously. ‘I’ve got a cupboard full of them that I can show you.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself to open it,’ said Lintott. ‘I know the truth when I hear it. I’ve had such a lot of practice, you see. So you take these delinquent lads, as nobody cares about …’
‘And nobody does,’ Rice interrupted, with a glint of his black eyes. ‘If I didn’t take them in, who would?’
‘There are benevolent institutions,’ said Lintott stoutly, knowing there were not enough.
‘My dear sir, a Drop in the Ocean of Want! Why, they die – not just the boys, but men and women and babies too – die not a stone’s throw from restaurants where a gentleman thinks nothing of spending a couple of sovereigns on his dinner. They die unwanted and ragged with their stomachs empty – my boys don’t!’
‘You needn’t offer to show me your kitchen, neither,’ said Lintott drily. ‘I believe you feed them, too. And clothe them. They wouldn’t catch any benefactor’s eye if they was dirty and ragged, would they?’
Mr Rice pondered over this remark, subdued.
‘So Mr Theodore Crozier was a benefactor, was he? Where did you dig him up?’
‘Oh, we’ve been good friends – I think I could call the gentleman a friend – for years and years.’
‘Don’t tell me you were at Rugby together. I shan’t believe that!’
A curious dignity possessed the small man.
‘I was a Foundling, my dear sir,’ he said. Then he lapsed back again. ‘Any schooling I had was in the School of Life, and with His Divine Light ever upon me!’
And he cast both moist eyes to the ornamented ceiling.
Lintott gave a snort of disgust.
‘So you reckoned to be friendly with Mr Crozier. A strange sort of friend, Mr Rice, to foment a scandal and threaten to ruin him.’
‘Scandal? I was trying to prevent scandal, my dear. I have the reputation of this charitable house to uphold! And I did ask Mrs Flynn to be particularly discreet.’
‘She did her best, but I was after her, you see. Now you must have read about the coroner’s case, and you never came forward with the information, though I understand that some letters are still in your possession. What were you hoping for? To wait until the scandal died down and then put a bit more pressure on Mr Crozier’s wife or brother, for instance? Hush money?’
Mr Rice pursed his lips and shrugged expressively.
‘Best let sleeping dogs lie, my dear sir. Best let them lie, believe me.’
Lintott considered him thoughtfully.
‘Very well, Mr Rice, I think we understand one another. So you are a philanthropist, and the late Mr Crozier was a philanthropist. He visited you, or visited this establishment, for several years – no doubt introduced by other philanthropists?’
Mr Rice nodded, and breathed on rosy fingernails.
‘There are a number of gentlemen very high in the City, and in the Professions, who patronise my boys and seek to alleviate their unfortunate lots. I never mention names. Love vaunteth not itself, you know. They prefer their benevolence to be of the anonymous variety.’
‘I’m sure they do. Now when did he part from the usual conditions of philanthropy, in a manner of speaking?’
‘Well, it was this way – I hope I express myself with sufficient delicacy, and that you don’t misunderstand my meaning …’
‘Get on with it!’
Mr Rice traced a pattern on the carpet with the toe of his moroccan slipper.
‘Mr Crozier always took a general interest in my boys, until I found Billie Mott. He took what you might call a particular interest in him. “Billie, mark my words,” I said to him many a time, “Mr Crozier will see you right!” Billie’s a very bright boy indeed, quite a cut above the usual. Nicely spoken and knows his letters. Mr Crozier had it in mind to make him a clerk, and Billie was very fond of him. But then there was the suggestion, in a most underhand way, of removing him from my protection and setting him up in his own rooms. And then I found the letters that Mr Crozier was writing to Billie, and I realized that All was Not Well.’ He paused. ‘Would you like a word with Billie while you’re here? It’s of no consequence if he’s eating his dinner. My boys dine early. Mott don’t mind, bless you.’
‘Fetch him up.’
An uncertain smile sidled across Mr Rice’s mouth as he interpreted Lintott’s tone. The inspector sat there, solid and expressionless; his boots planted on Mr Rice’s carpet, hat set squarely on his knees, hands set squarely about the hat. Much had been said, more lay unspoken between them, the greater part was yet to come.
‘Billie, my dear,’ cried his benefactor, as the door opened, ‘this gentleman is an Inspector from Scotland Yard. He wants a private word with you. It’s all right, you know,’ as the lad hesitated. ‘It’s absolutely confidential, my dear.’ Then he tried to ingratiate himself with Lintott and the boy at once. ‘They ain’t all as handsome as Mott, but they’re every bit as well-fed and well-clothed. I bought him that octagon tie – they’re all the rage. Yes, yes, a credit to the establishment. Sit down, Billie my dear, and talk to the Inspector nicely. He wants to know about your late friend Mr Crozier. Oh, Billie was prostrated when Mr Crozier died, weren’t you, Billie? Well, it was a friend and patron lost in one go …’
‘Sit down, lad,’ said Lintott crisply. ‘I don’t know if you’re as good at speechifying as your master here, but I’d rather you wasn’t. I’m more in the direct line myself.’
The boy could have been no more than sixteen, and in the epicene stage of young male beauty. For he was beautiful, not merely handsome as Mr Rice had said. Later he would become handsome and thereby lose his present attraction. Now he appeared as vulnerable as a girl, and even his uncertainty was another grace.
‘What sort of a delinquent were you, then?’ Lintott asked, surprised by his evident gentility.
Mott looked to his benefactor for instruction.
‘He lost his mother, Inspector. A very sad case. I endeavoured to help her but she was too far gone in …’ he tapped his chest and whispered, ‘Consumption, you know. A widow for many years. Well-born, too, I believe. But married beneath her. She asked me to watch over Billie here. He’s like her, aren’t you, my dear? Show the inspector your mamma’s portrait.’
The lad felt obediently in his elegant breast-pocket and handed over a little gold locket of some value. Imprisoned in paint and time, Mott’s female counterpart smiled at Lintott: silver-gold of head, dark and soft of eyes, with the same air of delicate hope.
‘Who was your father, lad?’ asked Lintott, handing the locket back.
‘Tell the inspector, my dear,’ Rice counselled, receiving another inquiring glance from the boy.
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p; ‘He was a music teacher, sir. My mama eloped with him against the wishes of her family. He caught cold and died when I was a small child. My mama had a very little money of her own, which was set aside for my education. She took in sewing, and painted in water-colours, to keep us.’
‘Weak chests,’ Rice explained, shaking his head in regret. ‘Both parents. Dear, dear!’
Lintott remarked the transparency of the boy’s complexion, and shook his own head.
‘Couldn’t you have helped your mama out a bit?’ he demanded, thinking of Bessie in the same situation: beleagured and valiant.
‘She wanted him to be a gentleman,’ Rice broke in. ‘So she insisted on his schooling. The family wanted nothing to do with him after she died, and her little nest egg was spent on her last illness. I was a Friend to them both. I was a Father to this boy. I was a Brother in Christ to that dear dead lady. Wasn’t I, Billie?’
‘You were very good, sir, to us both,’ said Mott frankly.
Rice turned to the inspector and spread out his hands, as if to say, ‘Note this!’
But Lintott replied, ‘You would have done better to set yourself to some honest trade, lad. Aye, better to sell that locket – though you do value it – than accept help of this sort. Aye, a thousand times better. Not that it’s my business. How long have you been here?’
‘Nearly twelve months, sir.’
‘You won’t remember your father, I expect? Just kept your mother company, eh? And loved her, of course, and she loved you and lived with the memory of him? Ah well! That’s often the way of it. Mr Crozier must have seemed an impressive sort of man to you, then? Stop looking to Mr Rice for your answers, lad! I’m not concerned with what goes on here, for the moment. When I’m tramping round after one case I don’t trouble to make more work for myself. Though I do remember anything that might come in handy if people don’t tell me the truth. Did you meet Mr Crozier as soon as you got here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Lintott regarded his hat as though the nob on top of it held a solution.
‘I’m going to put this matter very nicely,’ he said, after some reflection, ‘so that nobody’s sensibilities will be hurt. But I want proper replies, truthful replies, mind! Mr Crozier took a great liking to you, I hear. More liking than to the other lads?’
Mott pondered, and said, ‘We were more of a kind, sir. The others,’ with an apologetic look at Mr Rice, who was occupying some sorry world of his own, ‘are pretty rough sort of fellows, sir. Not …’ he glanced at the inspector who was also ‘not’, and stopped.
‘Not gentlemen,’ said Lintott bluntly. ‘I see what you mean. So you and he, in a way, were lonely here. Here and elsewhere, likely.’
The boy flushed up, and closed his lips as if to forestall the truth.
‘There was more to it than the usual relationship, then?’ Lintott pursued.
The boy nodded and swallowed. Then stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned back in his chair, legs outstretched, imitating ease.
‘It was a real friendship, in short?’ Lintott continued, banging each fact home like a dutiful nail. ‘You thought as much of him, perhaps, as you thought of your mama?’
Mott bent a highly intelligent pair of eyes on the inspector, and hazarded the truth.
‘I loved him,’ said Mott, quite simply.
Into the silence Mr Rice cried, ‘As a Father, Inspector, as a Father, of course.’
Neither the youth nor the policeman paid any attention to him.
‘That’s what I wanted to hear,’ said Lintott, satisfied. ‘Now give me a picture of him – your picture of him. Tell me what Mr Crozier was like.’
‘Very lonely. Very sad. Very sensitive.’
‘He was married, you know, to a lady of great qualities and beauty. He was the father of three fine children. What was so special about you?’
The boy was searching his inexperience for the unravelling of a mystery. He no longer eyed his questioner, nor tried to translate Mr Rice’s intentions. He was speaking as he must have thought, night after night, of something most strange and precious to him.
‘When I first saw Mr Crozier I thought of him as the father I had lost. I knew what he wanted of me. I knew what this house was. But what choice had I between this and starvation?’
‘Using your hands, perhaps?’ Lintott suggested obstinately.
Mott’s dark eyes beneath the silver-gold lock were unyouthfully ironic.
‘I am a weak person, sir, in both mind and body, and not particularly disposed to hard labour.’ He lifted both long hands from his pockets and spread them for the inspector to see. ‘That does not serve as an excuse, sir, merely an explanation.’
‘Well, well. Go on, lad.’
‘It was not as though we were strangers at all, but as if we had met before and recognized each other, sir.’
The bright head held a little to one side, the bright mouth inquiring. The dark face suddenly amazed.
‘We needed each other, sir. I needed his strength of character, the sense of protection he offered. He needed’ – the boy shrugged, unable to describe himself – ‘whatever I am, whatever I have to give.’
‘He was going to find you a position in life, was he? A clerkship in his firm?’
‘Something fairly light, sir.’
‘And set you up in rooms, so that he could visit you? So that no one else could visit you?’
Lintott saw a dream flare and vanish in the boy’s eyes.
‘How long could such a friendship have lasted?’ Lintott asked heavily.
‘For as long as both of us lived,’ said Mott with utter conviction.
‘A nice thing, to lure him away from me,’ Mr Rice cried. ‘What sort of recompense was I going to get for the feeding and clothing and Improving of his Mind? And don’t lean back so on the legs of that chair, Billie!’ he added petulantly.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was not thinking.’
‘You keep quiet!’ Lintott growled at Rice, never taking his gaze from the boy, for he sought further truths. ‘Now did you know that your philanthropic master here was blackmailing Mr Crozier?’
‘Yes, sir, but I was helpless, I am afraid. Dependent upon Mr Rice for my living.’
‘How did he get hold of your letters? Intercepted them? Stole them?’
‘Inspector! Billie!’ Rice beseeched, unheard.
‘Nothing can be private in this house, sir. They were not stolen so much as confiscated.’
‘Why should Mr Crozier write to you, if he was able to see you?’
Again the lad replied simply, ‘He loved me.’
‘It was a stupid thing to do,’ Lintott grumbled, professionally annoyed.
The boy said nothing. The curve of his mouth was compassion itself.
‘Rice!’ Lintott shouted, and smiled a little as the man jumped. ‘What were your terms to Mr Crozier? Speak up and speak fast!’
‘I suggested that since the boy’s reputation was tarnished he should pay some recompense. Five hundred pounds,’ said Mr Rice in answer to the inspector’s eyebrows.
‘How much did a visit cost him?’
‘A guinea for any of the other boys. Two guineas for Billie.’
‘Vice comes high these days,’ Lintott observed. ‘And did you stop the visiting?’
‘Oh yes, Inspector. Of course. Certainly. Stopped absolutely.’
‘Until he paid up?’
No answer.
‘And you judged that he would pay up, mostly because there was no one else he wanted. You could have ruined him, privately in the eyes of his family, publicly in the eyes of society, finished his firm. But the real draw was this lad here, wasn’t it? He’d pay up. Pay up and come back again. Probably pay you to let the lad go. So why didn’t he, then? Why didn’t he pay up and then never write another line? Never get copped again the same way.’
He stared at his little audience, and Mott leaned forward, clasping young hands between his knees.
‘Theo was a go
od man, as I am not,’ said the boy. ‘He could never accept himself. I can, you know. Deuce take it!’ said Mott, lightly, sadly, ‘I know myself pretty well, sir. I was closer to him than anyone, but there were times when I was no comfort to him. There were times when he hated himself, and then I was best out of the way, because I reminded him of what he was. If he had been ill and fretting over this trouble, and saw no end to it, he could have found himself alone once too often.’
Rice was being pettish with the antimacassars.
‘Is there anything else I can tell you, sir?’ Mott asked.
‘Not about Mr Crozier, but about yourself in another minute or so. Rice!’ And again the man’s leap to attention elicited a wry grin. ‘Where are the rest of those letters? In your Bible cupboard? No? Well, fetch them for me. All of them, mind, and sharpish! Now, Billie,’ as Rice hurried out, ‘can’t you stir yourself to do something better than this, lad?’
Mott’s beauty shone in the stuffy room, but his eyes reminded Lintott of the monkey on the barrel-organ: adult-sad. Still the inspector continued to proffer charitable inducement.
‘There must be something you can do, lad.’
Mott smiled.
‘You are very kind, sir, but there is nothing. I have been trained for nothing except to make myself agreeable. I possess nothing except this locket, and in spite of your counsel I would not part with it if I were starving. The only two people I loved are dead. Don’t trouble yourself over me, sir. I shall live somehow until I die, like everybody else.’
Lintott contemplated the gold-framed pictures until the return of Mr Rice, at whom he loosed the lash of his tongue.
‘I hope I see you and the others like you soundly judged on the Day of Judgement. Ah! You confounded hypocrite! I’ll remember you. See if I don’t. But for the moment you and I must make a bargain. Are these all the letters, now? That’s right. I don’t want any of Mr Crozier’s family held to ransom over this affair. Now mum’s the word, or I’ll have my lads on this establishment faster than you can wink.’