by Granger, Ann
‘Ah!’ returned Mr Midge with a wink. ‘That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’ Then he added virtuously, ‘O’course not! I knows my Christian duty and my responsibilities as a citizen. Five generations of lightermen I come from. You learn to respect the river and all that happens on it. Finding drowned creatures: dogs, cats, a donkey once . . . that’s all in the way of things and no need to worry about them. But a yooman being – you can’t ignore that, can you?’
There was nothing more to be learned here. We thanked Mr Midge for his help, advised him to go back to Wapping station to ask about a finder’s fee, and refused a renewed offer to send one of the nippers down to the pub with a jug.
Outside, it seemed colder, danker, and foggier after our brief time in the Midge family’s cosy parlour. There were few people about so that the street was unusually quiet. Nevertheless, my ear caught the scrape of a boot against a cobblestone and a rattle, as if the stone had been dislodged and rolled away. The sound seemed to come from opposite the Midge house.
‘Did you hear that?’ I asked the sergeant quietly.
We both stood still and strained our ears. Ribbons of fog swirled past. In among it, I thought a shape moved, large but formless. I whispered to Morris to ask if he’d seen anything.
But he said he hadn’t. ‘Fog plays tricks, sir,’ he said. ‘You could imagine we had ghosts all around us, if you had a fancy.’
‘Not a ghost, too solid,’ I returned. ‘Is there anyone there?’ I called.
But another wait of a few minutes in the cold dank air rewarded us only with silence. I sighed.
‘There is nothing more to be done now, Morris. Let’s go home.’
We set off again, apparently alone in our foggy world, but twice I paused and looked back, peering into the dense grey mass.
‘Somebody following, sir?’ whispered Morris.
‘It’s just a feeling.’
‘Know what you mean,’ said Morris. He, too, had more than once in his career experienced that tingling between the shoulder blades and at the back of the neck that tells a trained officer there is someone tracking him.
We proceeded onward, stopping once more to no avail.
‘He’s a clever fellow,’ murmured Morris. ‘When we stop, he stops.’
‘But he’s there,’ I muttered.
‘Aye, sir, he’s there,’ agreed Morris.
We had reached the parting of our ways. ‘This will confuse him,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Morris.’
There were more people about now, distorted forms dodging one another or colliding if they weren’t alert enough. The air was filled with muttered apologies and curses. If the stalker had tried to follow either Morris or myself now, he’d have given up. He, too, had probably set off home.
Elizabeth Martin Ross
It was a little before five that afternoon. Bessie, bringing in the coal scuttle from the yard, had set it down with a clang on the kitchen floor to announce, ‘The fog’s coming up, missus.’
I glanced at the window. Already the backyard had a misty veil hanging over it. It was too dark indoors to work by; but I did not want to light the gas mantles yet. Instead I lit a paraffin lamp and placed that on the kitchen table to enable us to set about the vegetables for that evening’s supper. Bessie had fired up the kitchen range and the atmosphere was cosy. I hoped Ben would not be delayed and would be able to get home before outside conditions deteriorated.
At that moment, startling us both considerably, there came a rattle and knock at the kitchen door. Bessie and I looked at one another. We had not heard the creak of the door from the alley that gave access to the yard, nor any footsteps approach across the paved area.
‘Who’s that?’ grumbled Bessie. ‘I’ve just been out there and there was no one about!’
I went to the kitchen window and peered out. I could see no one. The knock came again at the kitchen door, more insistent. It also came from very low down. Bessie took up the poker from the range and held it ready as a weapon. Then we both approached the back door and I pulled it open.
A swathe of mist drifted in. But I still saw no one. Then, giving us both a shock, a voice spoke at the level of our knees.
‘Good evenin’!’ it piped.
We looked down and saw the figure of a small child, well wrapped up against the chill.
‘Hullo!’ said Bessie. ‘Who are you, then? What do you want?’
‘You got any rags?’ demanded the childish treble. ‘Any old clothes what you don’t need no more?’
More and more thick mist was entering the kitchen and the pleasant warmth was fast evaporating.
‘You had better come inside,’ I said to the child.
Bessie gave me an ‘old-fashioned’ look and, turning to the infant, demanded, ‘You ain’t on your own, are you? Who are you with and where is he?’
‘Our granddad,’ said the child.
‘Where is your granddad?’ demanded Bessie again.
‘Going down the ’ouses on the other side of the road,’ said the little girl, as we now saw the speaker to be.
Reluctantly Bessie stood aside to allow the caller into the kitchen, and shut the door behind her. We surveyed our visitor.
She was so bundled up in a mixture of clothing and shawls that she resembled nothing so much as a parcel of rags herself, with overlarge boots at one end, and a pale, grime-streaked face, framed with tangled fair hair, at the other. The whole figure was topped by an adult woman’s hat of felt, with a broken feather in it.
Bessie was still suspicious. ‘How did you get into our yard? You’re not tall enough to reach up to the latch on the door.’
‘I stood on me box,’ said the child immediately.
‘Box? What box? I don’t see no box!’ snapped Bessie.
‘What is your name?’ I interrupted Bessie’s inquisition.
‘Sukey,’ said the infant. Then, returning to her purpose with a businesslike determination, ‘We need old clothes, anythin’. Rags is better than nothing.’
Bessie, still holding the poker, had gone to the window and was peering into the evening gloom. ‘He might be out there,’ she said warningly, to me. Then, to the child, ‘We’ve got nothing for you. You clear off!’
‘No, wait!’ I put out a hand to stop Bessie, who was making to open the back door again and eject the visitor. I had remembered what Ben had told me of the old clothes’ dealer he’d encountered recently, with a young child among the rags on the cart. Of the child, I asked, ‘Your granddad wouldn’t be known as Raggy Jeb, would he?’
The child scowled at me and didn’t reply.
‘It’s all right,’ I assured her. ‘My husband knows of your granddad.’ I turned to our maid. ‘Bessie! Go upstairs and fetch down those two old shirts of the inspector’s.’
‘I was going to cut them up for polishing cloths,’ objected Bessie.
‘If the child was sent out to collect, she will be in trouble if she goes back to her grandfather empty-handed,’ I whispered.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Bessie ungraciously. She handed me the poker. ‘But you keep tight hold of that while I’m gone, missus. She could be sent in ahead as a decoy. Thieves do that, you know! I’ll bolt this door here, so no one can rush in, once you’re on your own.’
‘Yes, yes, Bessie. Just go and get the shirts. It won’t take you more than five minutes. You sit down on that chair by the range and warm yourself, Sukey,’ I added to the child.
Sukey clambered on to the wooden chair and sat there, with her short legs swinging, the over-large boots incongruous. Still the little businesswoman, she said, ‘Shirts is all right. Lace is better. You got any lace?’
‘No, Sukey, I don’t have any lace. I do have some fruitcake. Would you like a piece?’
Sukey’s eyes gleamed in her grimy face. ‘Yus,’ she said simply.
I cut a slice of cake and handed it to her. She grabbed it from me with a muttered, ‘Fanks!’
‘It is a very cold night for your grandfather
to bring you out!’ I said. ‘If he is around, I shall tell him so.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Sukey indistinctly through a mouthful of cake. ‘I always goes wiv our granddad.’
‘How old are you?’
Sukey considered the question. ‘I think I’m six,’ she said. She frowned. ‘I might be five but I think I’m six. Anyway, I ain’t a baby.’
No, I thought with a sigh. She wasn’t a baby. She was a child of the poor and the poor cannot have a childhood. As soon as they are able, they are put to some work. Ben, at six, had been sent down a coal mine. There were households aplenty where the women earned money doing ‘piecework’, such as hemming plain handkerchiefs or sewing sets of buttons on to cards. Little girls no older than Sukey were set to help add to the day’s quota. As the day grew late, and the child tired, she would often be ‘tied up’. This meant attaching her to the furniture in a standing position so that she could not fall asleep over the work.
Sukey was carefully picking up cake crumbs that had fallen on to her lap and transferring them to her mouth. She was such a frail little thing that I wondered when she had last had a proper meal. She would grow up stunted and old before her time, I thought sadly. But her grandfather probably did his best to take care of her, even if he did take her out on such a cold and clammy night as this.
‘My husband says your granddad lets you ride on his cart,’ I said. ‘He said you were tucked in under the old clothing when he met you both.’
‘S’warm . . .’ mumbled Sukey through the last crumbs.
‘I would have thought it might be a bit fusty – smelly.’ I didn’t know if ‘fusty’ was in her vocabulary.
Sukey looked at me, clearly perplexed. She was used to the smell of the old clothes and thought nothing of it. ‘Well, it is kind of him, anyway,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Is he a kind man, Sukey?’
‘Yes,’ said Sukey. ‘He looks after us when my pa is away.’
‘You have brothers and sisters?’
‘I got one brother. I had a sister but she took a fever and died.’
‘I’m sorry. Where does your papa go when he – er – goes away?’
I suspected he answer might be that he went to prison from time to time.
But Sukey said, ‘He goes to sea.’
‘That is hard for your mother, to have him away so much.’
‘It don’t matter,’ said Sukey patiently, ‘Because we got our granddad.’ Perhaps to underline that I was worrying about nothing and her grandfather was adequate in all circumstances, she added, ‘He give a drunk woman a ride the other night, on the cart.’
‘So you had to squeeze in with the . . . drunken lady?’
‘No,’ she shook her head. The movement dislodged her hat and she put her hands to straighten it. ‘Granddad sent me off to the pub to wait for him, while he helped the drunk woman.’
‘The poor woman had no friends to help her?’
Sukey frowned. ‘I fink she was on her own. She must have had a skinful if she couldn’t walk. Pa had to give a hand. I didn’t see her,’ she added regretfully. ‘I heard Pa telling our ma about it later.’
‘And do you have a grandmother, too?’ I asked.
Sukey scowled. ‘I don’t see her much. She’s our pa’s ma. Pa takes us to see her sometimes, when he’s home, but she asks him for money and he don’t have any – and she never has cake!’ she concluded with a wistful look at our cake tin on the kitchen table.
I took the hint and cut her another slice.
Bessie clattered back downstairs as Sukey was finishing this second helping. She was carrying the old shirts bundled in her arms and also two small items in a colourful pink.
‘What are those?’ I asked.
‘Woollen mitts,’ said Bessie defiantly. ‘I knitted ’em for myself but she can have them.’ She turned to Sukey and held up the pink mittens. ‘Here, see these? These aren’t for your granddad, they’re for you, understand? They will be a bit big, but you can put your hands in and pull them up over your sleeves. They’ll keep your hands warm.’
Sukey obediently held out her hands for Bessie to put the mittens on them. I have to admit, I was hard put not to laugh, for the poor child was already such a mix of clothing that the mittens added a final incongruous touch. I was reminded how, in winter, children will put an old hat on a snowman, and stick a clay pipe in its mouth.
‘Now then,’ said Bessie briskly. ‘You can be off back to your granddad. I’ll see you out!’
She opened the back door and pushed Sukey ahead of her into the gathering murk. I heard the slam of the door into the alley. Moments later, Bessie was back.
‘She has got a box,’ she announced. ‘It’s only a cardboard one and not very big. But it’s strong enough to support her weight. She’s dragging it down the alley and stopping to climb on it at every back gate, so that she can reach the latch.’
‘Poor child,’ I said. ‘It was kind of you, Bessie, to give her your mittens.’
‘They worked up too small for me, anyway,’ said Bessie gruffly. ‘Now then, let me get on with them carrots.’
Much later that evening, after supper, Ben and I sat before our parlour fire and he told me of his day.
‘I have lost Harry Parker. He was a valuable witness and I was remiss in not questioning him more closely.’
‘So you are sure it is not an accident he was in the river?’
Ben hunched his shoulders. ‘There is such a thing as coincidence, but in murder investigations it doesn’t show up often. I have my own theory. Someone saw Harry as a threat or a serious problem. Parker was very short of money. Let us suppose he had seen something, or heard or knew in some way of something. Instead of keeping dangerous knowledge to himself – or telling the police – he went to another person; and asked that person to pay a price for his silence. Perhaps we’ll never know.
‘I thought, if I insisted, he’d stay tight as a clam. If I waited, he might either get careless and let slip a piece of information; or so frightened that he would come to me rather than risk his chances alone. But through waiting I missed my chance, and gave a killer his. So, there it is.’ He heaved a sigh and added quietly, ‘He is out there, Lizzie. He watched Midge’s house while we were there tonight. He followed us when we left. Morris agreed.’
I shivered at the image of the two officers walking through the fog-bound streets, knowing that someone tracked them, unseen.
To dismiss the uncomfortable thought, I said, ‘Speaking of coincidences, you recall you told me of Jeb Fisher, the rag-picker?’
Ben looked up, surprised. ‘What of him?’
I related Sukey’s visit.
Ben looked annoyed. ‘I meant to fix a stronger bolt on that alley door. But no bolt, however strong, is any good if it’s not used. Tell Bessie, that door is to be bolted on this side all the time.’
‘Yes, I’ll make sure it is. But, Ben, it was such a sad thing to see a little child out on a night like this, dragging a cardboard box along to stand on.’
‘There are children her age in worse circumstances. She has a family and she lives with them in some sort of hovel. Others are out sleeping in doorways. I believe her grandfather looks after her in his own way, and probably loves her. You say he cares for the family when her father goes to sea?’
‘So she says. There is another grandparent, her father’s mother and not Raggy Jeb’s wife. I gather this grandma isn’t so popular in the family because she doesn’t help out. Quite the opposite! She asks Sukey’s father for money whenever she sees him. Sukey told me Raggy Jeb took a drunken woman on his cart the other night, so it seems he is a kindly soul, and not just within his family.’
Ben looked up sharply. ‘A drunken woman? Which night?’
‘I have no idea. Her father had to help put her on the cart, so he must be home from his latest voyage. Sukey didn’t see the woman. She was sent off to wait in the pub.’
Ben tapped his fingers on the table in thought. ‘A drunken woman, incapable, possibl
y unconscious . . . Not, in fact, unlike . . .’
With a burst of enthusiasm he said, ‘Suppose some conveyance like that were used to move Clifford’s body? It wouldn’t be difficult to find one in that part of town. There must be handcarts and barrows of all sorts around, used during the day by costermongers, fish sellers, and scavengers like Raggy Jeb. The owners wouldn’t be plying their trade at that hour of the evening and their barrows and carts would be available to borrow.’
A silence fell; during which Ben was lost in his thoughts until, suddenly, he looked up. ‘You gave her my old shirts? What was wrong with those shirts? They had plenty of wear in them!’
Chapter Thirteen
LATER THAT evening, after I had persuaded Ben that the shirts really had been too frayed for an inspector of police to wear, we fell to talking of the Wellings family again. More specifically of Frank and Patience; and Ben’s request that I would not go back to Dorset Square – or not for a while.
‘It puts me in a difficult position, don’t you see, Lizzie dear?’ he asked anxiously. ‘There is Superintendent Dunn telling me you must not interfere—’
‘I have not interfered!’ I had interrupted, annoyed at the unjust accusation.
‘No, of course not! But, Lizzie, it is enough that Carterton seems to believe he can waltz into Scotland Yard whenever he feels like it, and quiz me about an investigation. At least that is direct, unlike his using you, which was underhand.’ He raised a hand to stem my protest. ‘Yes, it was. He has not the right to employ your help, either to learn anything about police business, or to act as his accomplice with regard to your Aunt Parry.’
I still had my mouth open to deny Frank had manoeuvred me. But then I thought to myself that, probably, Frank had done just that. It was ever Frank’s way to make use of others. So I only said, ‘Mr Dunn would not object to my visiting Patience in Goodge Place? That is a family matter. Frank is to marry her, after all.’
‘No, no, go to Goodge Place, by all means,’ said Ben. But he added, ‘If that young fellow, Edgar Wellings, shows his face while you are there, take good note of anything he says, won’t you? Or let me know of anything at all that you should hear or notice while you are there. Anything you think might be of interest to me.’