Jo had given me instructions about what apparel I should wear for our visit to the fence. ‘Nothin’ tofficky. If ’e sees you’s well-togg’d he’ll mark ya for a gull.’ In truth I had nothing of that sort to boast of, only the suit I had worn on Jo’s birthday, and I knew well enough not to wear that in his company again. Every other item of clothing I owned was now so worn that I could pass through the lowest parts of Somers Town without notice.
In those days you saw whole streets of shops there offering shabby old clothes for sale; trousers, coats, shirts, waistcoats and whatnot hung on wooden rods before the door, or else were displayed in the grimy windows. Old boots and shoes might be ranged outside on the pavement, often without laces, and tongues hanging out of them like thirsty dogs. Most of the shopkeepers were Jews, or Irish. What I didn’t know, until Jo informed me, was that some of them were in the business of receiving stolen property. Thieves who could not offload their haul on licensed pawnbrokers would take it to one of these ‘dolly shops’ and dispose of their articles at a vastly reduced price, perhaps only a sixth or an eighth part of their value. If they were so minded they could come back to redeem them, as they would in a pawn shop, but very few did.
So one afternoon Jo led me down an alleyway off Ossulston Street and thence to a shop as I have just described, with no sign above the door, but thickly hung about with articles of female dress, most of doubtful vintage. As we went inside Jo flapped his hand at some enormous off-white petticoats and muttered, ‘Could make a sailcloth outta them,’ and the sound of my laughter brought forth a tall cove from round the back; he was somewhere in his thirties, wore a white shirt and black waistcoat, and a skullcap. His manner was casually professional with Jo, whom he seemed to recognise. They both instantly fell into slang, a quick back-and-forth dialogue I struggled to construe. The only part of it I caught was the repeated word ‘fawney’, which I knew to mean a ring. The man flicked his eyes interrogatively from Jo to me.
‘Oh, he’s with me. He’s called David, too!’ cried Jo, though the coincidence did not seem to impress my namesake. He stared at me narrowly for a few moments, then nodded as if to say, It’s no matter. Or perhaps, He’s no matter. He invited us to come through to the back, where his manner visibly lightened, and he became almost genial. We sat on decrepit armchairs that were coming to the end of their natural life, the horsehair poking through like mortal wounds. David – the fence – had opened a wooden case on his desk and was displaying its contents over a faded velvet cloth. Jo leaned forward and examined each ring as it was laid down. Having done so he looked away, his mouth in a pout of disappointment.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘don’t give us snide.’
David stared at him for a moment, then smiled, as if he had been caught out. ‘It fetches a good price, my friend.’
‘Yeah. But it’s still snide.’ They were fakes, it seemed. Jo shifted in his chair, and dropped his voice confidingly. ‘See, the one we’s arfter belongs to his –’ he gestured at me – ‘h’intended.’
I didn’t much care for this little fiction, but I trusted Jo’s instincts for negotiation. David stared at me pityingly, as if the loss of it could only have been my fault. Sighing, he produced a key and opened a drawer of his desk. From this he lifted a strongbox, which he unlocked with another key. Without letting us see what was in there, he placed one ring after another in a row upon the velvet strip, as if he were about to perform a trick. Five diamonds winked against the dingy light of the room. The fence handed a dainty magnifying glass to Jo for his closer perusal. He picked one of them up, eyed it, then handed over the glass for me to do the same. The gem sparkled with a brilliancy even I could tell was genuine. It shone so brightly as to seem almost on fire. But I also knew it wasn’t Kitty’s ring.
‘You sure of it?’ said Jo, scrutinising it again.
I nodded, and turned to the man. ‘The ring – the one that was sto– the one she lost – it had a different shape. Cut into a sort of crown . . .’
‘What shape? Oval?’
‘No . . . a hexagon.’
‘Ah,’ he said shrewdly. ‘An Antwerp Rose. Quite rare, I should say.’
‘You seen one recent?’ said Jo.
‘Maybe,’ said the fence, his expression unmoving.
‘Don’t you fret, David. We ain’t no narks.’
The fence sat very still for a moment, then seemed to relax. ‘Let’s say – I might’ve seen one such, just lately.’
‘But you wasn’t buyin’?’
‘Not at his price.’
‘How much?’
David gave a little shake of his head. ‘A monkey.’
‘Pardon me?’ I asked, as an image of Kitty’s disagreeable pet seized upon my mind’s eye.
‘A cool five hundred,’ supplied Jo. An involuntary exclamation escaped me. The street price, as of any prigged jewellery, was much less than its actual value, reflecting both the eagerness of the seller and the calculation of the fence, who was after all taking his own risk in receiving stolen valuables. Dumbstruck, I had not even thought of asking the vital question, but Jo had.
‘The cove who flashed it. Was ’e about so tall, with a jail crop and ears stickin’ out like that?’
Our host gave a wry snort in response to the description. He left a sly beat before saying, ‘I couldn’t rightly say, it was that dark.’
I looked to Jo, thinking he would challenge him on this evasion, but he only nodded and extended his hand across the desk. The two of them shook, but as I rose, preparing to leave, David leaned forward to mutter something in Jo’s ear. It seems he wanted assurances as to my discretion, for I heard Jo tell him, sotto voce, that I could be trusted – that I was ‘proper leary’.
We were out on the street again as I sighingly regretted David’s failure to identify the man who tried to sell him the ring.
Jo looked at me. ‘Whatja mean? It’s Gaffy, no question.’
‘But . . . your man said he couldn’t recognise him, it was too dark.’
‘Nah. You gotta listen. ’E said I couldn’t rightly say . . . meanin’ – yeah, that’s the trosseno, but you didn’t hear it from me cos I didn’t say nothin’. He just didn’t want it traced back to ’im. See?’
We walked on, and I pondered the interview just gone. If Gaffy did indeed have the ring in his possession, it would require nerve as well as money to get it back. I recalled his murderous look that day in the Brill when Jo had pulled the knife on him and saved my skin. I was not sure if he had recognised me again at Bindon Fields, but he surely would have seen Jo. A little shiver of dread passed through me as I considered the peril to which I might be exposing him.
‘Jo,’ I began, and he blinked of a sudden, as one whose train of thought had been interrupted. Perhaps his preoccupation had been running along similar lines to my own. ‘Don’t take this wrong, but I’m minded to pursue this matter alone. She’s my friend, Kitty – I don’t want you sticking your neck out for her.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He looked amused by my unburdening him of responsibility. ‘And how d’you mean to pursue it h’exactly? You know where Gaffy hangs out, do ya?’
‘I could find out,’ I said, shrugging.
He stopped and gave me a pitying stare. ‘You ain’t that leary.’
I had just let myself in at Hanover Street when Mrs Home, my landlady, poked her head round the parlour door. She said that a gentleman had stopped by an hour ago with a message to meet him at his office. And the gentleman’s name? I enquired. She couldn’t recall – so sorry – but he was fattish, with a beard, and had ‘piggy’ eyes. She added, gnomically, ‘If ’e wus hanged for his beauty, ’e’d be hanged innocent.’ ‘From the Chronicle, was he?’ ‘That’s it!’ she cried. ‘Thank you, Mrs Home – most helpful.’
Ten minutes later I had hailed a cab on the City Road and was heading through Clerkenwell. It was not like Paget to have called in person, which inclined me to think the summons was urgent. Overhead, thunder mumbled distantly. As I looked out
of the window the sky seemed to bulge, purplish and grey, and the early-evening light turned grainy. I paid off the cabman at Fetter Lane, and took the stairs two at a time up to the Chronicle’s offices. Paget was at his desk, an odd expression on his face.
‘I came straight away,’ I said, answering his look.
‘I’ve had word from a police station in Chelsea,’ he said. ‘They’ve found a body – fished it out of the Thames a few hours ago.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Whose?’
‘They believe it’s Alfred Kenton. Care to join me?’
By the time we had walked to the Strand the rain was merciless; it beat down on the cobbles so ferociously that the droplets leapt back up. We sloshed along the pavement until we managed to stop a hansom going westwards, and damply hauled ourselves inside. Paget’s mood was tense, and trying to distract myself from the business ahead of us I said, ‘You made quite an impression on my landlady.’
Paget acknowledged this with a grunt, then looked out of the window. We didn’t exchange another word until the cab clattered to a halt at the station off Oakley Street. The constable standing at the front desk took our names, then another officer conducted us down the stairs and along a gloomy, green-tiled corridor. The gas jets burned dimly in their brackets. As we proceeded I felt an unpleasant constriction in my chest, and my heart seemed to be trying to escape through my gullet. We had reached an iron-bound door, behind which lay, I suppose, what was coming to us all.
The constable heaved open the door and we entered a long, cold vault of whitewashed brick walls, reeking of carbolic acid, cigar smoke and, just beneath it, putrefaction. I felt a warning lurch deep in my stomach. An aproned attendant, whose cigar it was, greeted us with a genial detachment.
‘Gents. This way, if you please.’ His voice echoed off the walls.
We followed him past a row of metal trolleys, all unoccupied but for the last in the line, where he paused. Something – someone – formed a lumpy contour beneath the brown hessian shroud. The man put his cigar between his teeth, and taking the cloth in his meaty hands, he drew it back. Kenton lay there, bloated, grey-skinned and fully clothed. His mouth was a narrow, slotted grimace. Small unsightly cuts cross-hatched the eyelids – it was suggested that a gull had pecked at his eyeballs. I stared aghast for a moment, then looked away. A rank river smell of decay filled my nostrils, and I dry-retched once, twice. As I half crouched, hands on my knees, Paget lowered his head to mine and said quietly, ‘Do you wish to leave?’
I shook my head, waited for my stomach to settle, then straightened to face the company. ‘I do beg your pardon. I’ve never seen a dead – um, corpse before.’
‘Well, you’ll never see one deader than that,’ mused the attendant casually. I was surprised that Kenton’s face did not excite pity in me; death had wrought such an emptiness upon it that, for the moment, I felt nothing very much at all. ‘From the bloat on him I’d say he was in the river at least a week. No marks, apart from his eyes, no sign of a struggle. Looks like he done himself in.’
At this I glanced at Paget, whose gaze thinned just perceptibly. After a silent contemplation he lifted up the corpse’s left hand and examined the wrist; then he walked round to the other side and did the same with the right. Something seemed to be bothering him. He looked over to the attendant.
‘Has anyone, I mean yourself and the men who dragged him out, rearranged the man’s clothing?’
‘Not that I know of,’ he replied.
‘So this is exactly how he was found?’
‘Yeah. We haven’t had time to strip him. Though I believe there was a pocketbook found on the, er, deceased. They’ll show it to you at the desk.’
Paget brooded a little while longer, then with a lift of his chin indicated to the attendant that he had seen enough. The man pulled the shroud back over Kenton’s poor, lifeless shape, and to my relief we filed out of that grim chamber. Back at the desk, a sergeant brought out a wooden box containing the personal effects of the dead man: a watch and chain, a few coins, a clay pipe and a waterlogged pocketbook. This last Paget took up and opened. Whatever papers had been secured within were now a sodden mess. He prised out some damp wallet litter, including a card of his own – which would explain the police’s summoning him. There was one other item in there, a photographic reproduction about the size of a carte de visite, curling with the damp. It was a country scene which, to my shock, I recognised.
‘That’s Bindon Fields,’ I said.
Paget turned the card over. ‘You’re quite right,’ he replied, showing me its name printed on the reverse. ‘You know it?’
I told him briefly of my recent excursion to the place. ‘It was organised by a charity – the Social Protection League.’
‘Never heard of them,’ said Paget. ‘Sounds not at all the sort of thing Kenton would have backed. You know how he detested charity-mongers.’
I held the card up. ‘Then why was he carrying this?’
Paget was about to reply when he noticed the sergeant earwigging our conversation. Assuming a gracious front he thanked the policeman for his trouble, and led me out of the place. We stood at the top of the steps, watching the rain thrash the pavement. I could smell the odour of the mortuary attendant’s cigar on my damp coat.
‘Poor Kenton,’ I murmured. ‘Have they told his wife?’
‘That is my next call,’ he said, consulting his watch. ‘And I wish to heaven it were not.’ Something in his preoccupied gaze suggested he had more on his mind than that sombre duty. As the noise of wheel traffic cleared for a moment, I said, ‘Did you ever suppose the fellow a suicide?’
‘No – nor was he. Of course one can never speak with certainty where the mind is concerned, but I’d swear on my life that Kenton would not have done away with himself.’
‘How then? No sign of a struggle, they said.’
‘No, and I checked for rope burns on his wrists. But there was a sign.’ His tone was steady and unsurprised, as he continued. ‘It struck me almost immediately. Kenton was no dandy, but he knew how to button a double-breasted coat. That’s why I asked if anyone had disturbed his clothing when they brought him in. The coat we saw on him just now had been fastened the wrong way – from which I deduce that someone else had put it on him, possibly after he was drugged. Or already dead.’
‘But . . . who?’
He gave a little shrug. ‘The police will not mourn him, not after the Trafalgar Square riot. And as leader of the Rental Reform people he’s been a nuisance to those slum landlords . . . His demise is rather convenient for a lot of people.’ I now realised why he had asked me to attend that horrible place. ‘Do you begin to believe me now? Be on your guard – this isn’t the end of it.’
I kept thinking of that postcard of Bindon Fields found on Kenton’s drowned body. What interest did it have for him? As Paget said, the Social Protection League were exactly the sort of moralistic meddlers Kenton had loathed. I decided that if I were to make sense of it I should start with the SPL’s most prominent board member, Father Kay. I recalled now his keen advocacy of country air for his ‘flock’. It did not seem to me an ignoble mission, giving working people a day in the country that might otherwise be beyond their means. Perhaps Kenton had thought so, too.
St Columba’s was an undistinguished church on Lancing Street, approached via a small courtyard hedged with gravestones of a much older age. Yew trees formed an archway over the path. I had written to Kay seeking an interview, and he had invited me to call on him before he did his morning rounds of the parish. A charlady washing the church steps directed me past the vestry and along a flagstoned corridor, at the end of which I knocked upon an oak-panelled door, and waited. A voice sounded within (‘Come’) and I entered to find the rector seated at his desk. It was a modestly appointed office; a glass-fronted bookcase stood to one side, whilst on a table to his right rested a coloured globe of the world. On the wall behind him was a large plaster crucifix, with Christ’s wounds painted a livid crimson w
here the nails and thorns had pierced him. The image of Kenton’s pecked eyes came unbidden to my thoughts.
‘Mr Wildeblood, is it?’ said Kay in his crooning Irish lilt, directing me to take a seat opposite. His manner seemed less formal now that he was in his own domain. ‘Catherine’s friend,’ he added, and it took a moment for the penny to drop – he meant Kitty.
‘That’s right, Father.’
‘You enjoyed our day at Bindon Fields, I hope? It was thought a great success.’
‘Indeed. Though I’m sorry to say it ended rather badly for Ki– for Catherine. Her ring was stolen.’
‘Yes, I gather. Most unfortunate. Though amongst this class of people . . .’ He spread his hands, as though the rest of the sentence was implicitly understood – only my expression of curiosity prompted him to finish it – ‘. . . well, thieving is endemic.’ He seemed to offer this as a matter of fact, and before I could reply he had moved mellifluously on. ‘So, there was something you wished to discuss?’
‘Er, yes. Have you ever had dealings with a man named Alfred Kenton?’
‘The rent-reform man? No, not that I recall. But I do know he was rather hostile to the Social Protection League. A friend of yours?’
‘An acquaintance. He was found dead earlier this week. Drowned.’
‘Ah,’ said Kay with a slump of his shoulders. ‘I’m very sorry to hear it. An accident?’
‘That is unclear. The reason I ask is – an item was found on his body that appeared to have come from the offices of your League. A promotional photograph, about so big, of Bindon Fields.’
Kay had opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out an envelope, which he handed over to me. Inside was a card, the exact replica of the one recovered from Kenton. ‘The same?’ he asked.
I nodded, and said, ‘Do you know how Kenton came to have it in his possession?’
He shook his head. ‘These cards are not officially in circulation. Either Mr Kenton was given it by some influential friend or else it might have been – stolen.’
The Streets Page 16