by Granger, Ann
We made our way down to the river. The tide was out, leaving an expanse of glistening yellowish-brown Thames mud above which the gulls swooped and dived in sweeps of white wings, seeking anything edible. Also searching the mud we saw a group of young boys, digging energetically for whatever they might find. They squelched through the morass in their bare feet, risking all manner of injury from hidden objects, and who knew what kind of disease. The more they disturbed the mud, so the stench of it became stronger as every foulness it contained released its gases. No wonder Billy had carried the smell about with him and I had noticed it at his mother’s home. I would have put my handkerchief over my nose, but I did not want to show over-sensitivity before Morris and Barrett, who strode sturdily on. The wooden ribs of a boat, beached and rotted, stuck up like an animal carcass. After we had passed that, we met fewer people of any sort and eventually found ourselves walking through a wasteland of deserted – or apparently deserted – buildings, some of them very old indeed.
‘The Safe Return Inn,’ I asked Barrett, ‘what kind of a place was it? Very old?’
‘They say it had been there since King Henry’s day,’ said Barrett. ‘I don’t know if that was so. It was a rickety place, as I recall from when I was a boy. The top half of it leaned out so far you’d have thought it would fall down into the street at any moment. It had a name as a place smuggled goods changed hands, so the police knew it well. Then one night it went up in flames and that was the end of it. We kids all ran down there to watch it burn.’
‘Arson?’ I asked.
‘So the rumour went. But it was such an old place, all wood, and still lit by candles and oil lamps, that it wasn’t a surprise. Nothing was ever proved. But there was no loss of life, nor even injury, and that was odd for such a blaze. Those who saw it burn said so many rats ran from the building, they were like one of the plagues in old Egypt. I can vouch for that myself. They were everywhere in the streets running round our feet.’
A quarter of an hour later, we found ourselves walking down a narrow lane lined with decrepit buildings. There was little sign of physical life, yet we were surrounded by noises, many of them strange. The wind blew through cracks and crannies, whistling eerily. The wooden beams and planks forming much of the structure of the buildings groaned like a ship under full sail. It was like being accompanied by ghosts. Even Morris looked uneasily about him.
At last we came to an open patch where the Safe Return Inn had once stood. Charlie Mott, with his seaman’s way of looking at the world, had referred to the shell of the building as the ‘hull’, as of a ship. With the blackened beams sticking up into the sky like the ribs of a ship, such as we’d seen earlier in the mud, and the charred remains of planks of wood amid the rubble, the scene did suggest a wooden man-o’-war that had met its fate in some desperate sea battle.
‘Here, sir,’ said Barrett unnecessarily.
‘So that,’ said Morris, pointing ahead, ‘will be the old chandlery.’
Beyond the ruins of the inn stood another wooden building, two storeys high, constructed of tarred planks above a low brick foundation. The planks nearer to us showed dark scorch marks; but considering its flammable structure and proximity to the site of the Safe Return, it was a miracle it had not been reduced to cinders in the flames that had consumed the old inn. It was not surprising the chandlery as a business had subsequently moved out and away.
‘Someone is at home, sir,’ said Morris in a low voice.
A thin spiral of smoke came from an iron pipe sticking out of the side of one wall. It probably connected with a stove of some sort inside.
‘I’ll go in,’ I said. ‘Morris, you stay outside at this end of the building and Barrett, you stand guard at the other end. If anyone comes out and tries to make off, stop him.’
‘What if someone comes along this lane intending to go in?’ asked Morris. ‘He’ll see us waiting here, Mr Ross, and change his mind fast.’
‘True. You can both stay out of sight, I think. There are doorways enough and these places around look empty.’
I pushed at the door into the chandlery. To my relief, it gave beneath my hand and swung inward with a creak. If we had had to break in, that would have ruined any chance of catching our man, if he were there.
I stepped into a narrow passage leading into a large open area. To my left, a wooden stair ran up to a floor above. To my right, the ‘room’ had been fitted out as a dwelling place. There was a table, some rough chairs that looked knocked together by someone with rudimentary joinery skills and a bedstead I guessed made by the same carpenter who had fashioned the chairs. Stacks of old clothes and rags along the back wall awaited sorting. At the very far end a primitive iron stove smoked villainously, filling the air with an acrid stench and making my eyes water. The iron pipe supposed to take the smoke outside was working imperfectly, either badly fitted or just too narrow. In the corner a slatternly young woman stooped over a washtub, wielding a bar of soap in an attempt to do some laundry. Two children crouched nearby watching her. One of them was little Sukey, so I knew I had found the right place. The other child was a boy of about ten years of age and he looked familiar, too. To my right, hanging on a hook, was a sailor’s heavy pea coat of dark woollen cloth.
At my entry, the woman looked up from her labours at the washtub, staring at me through a curtain of loose, dishevelled hair. Then she dropped her bar of soap into the water and opened her mouth.
‘Don’t scream!’ I ordered sharply. ‘I am a police officer.’
She remained staring wildly at me with her mouth open. Sukey simply looked at me. The boy, however, began to edge along the wall.
‘You stay there, young fellow!’ I told him. ‘You have been following me about all over the area for these past few days, a very efficient little spy. So you might as well remain now to see the end of the adventure.’
The boy froze but Sukey spoke up. ‘I’ve seen him before,’ she said, pointing at me. ‘He spoke to Granddad.’
‘You hold your tongue!’ snapped her mother, coming out of her trance. She straightened up. ‘What do you want? I’m a busy woman. I got work to do.’
‘You have a husband?’ I asked.
Despite herself, her glance drifted to the pea coat before she turned a defiant stare on me. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Just answer me. These children have a father?’
‘O’course they got a pa!’
‘So, then, what’s his name?’
She had had time to gather her wits. ‘Fisher,’ she said brusquely. ‘But he ain’t here. I ain’t seen him in a long time. He’s left us.’
‘I dare say your name is Fisher,’ I told her. ‘But the father of these children is Billy Scroggs. Where is he?’
Even as I spoke my ear caught a creak of wood behind me. The boy’s eyes turned in that direction. I spun round and saw him at last.
Scroggs was a big, solid brute of a man, certainly the most substantial ‘ghost’ I would ever come across. His bulk did not come from height. He was of no more than average in that. But he was broad and heavy in the shoulders with long arms. His head was thrust forward and sunk into his shoulders so that he appeared to have very little neck at all. His skin was weather-beaten and tanned, his hair dark and curly, flecked with grey. He wore a heavy sweater of oiled wool. It covered his arms so that I could not see the tattoo, but I did not need to. He stood at the top of the wooden stair and now began slowly to descend it, keeping his mean little eyes fixed on me. I knew I had to stand my ground; and that it would be difficult. Morris and Barrett were outside. But they watched for someone approaching the chandlery or possibly rushing out. They might not immediately realise there was a confrontation inside. I kept my voice as authoritative as possible.
‘I believe you are William Scroggs,’ I said to him. ‘Who also gives the name of William Jones. You sold a pair of earrings recently, to a pawnbroker by the name of Sharp. I had good reason to believe those earrings were stolen in the course of a violent cri
me. I arrest you on suspicion of murder—’
But that was as far as I got. Something hit me on the back of the head. It was not a heavy blow, but the suddenness of it caused me to step forward and automatically duck, off-balance. Something flew past and skidded along the floor and I saw it was the bar of soap. The woman had flung it at me with unerring accuracy. With a roar, Scroggs leaped down the last few stairs and launched himself at me.
The weight of him and the force of the collision slammed me down on to the floor, the breath knocked out of my body. As I struggled to regain control, Scroggs’s fist crashed into my face. At the same time, the woman threw herself into the mêlée, screeching. Somehow I managed to free one arm and flung it up towards my assailant’s face. My forearm, by a stroke of luck, caught Scroggs across the bridge of his nose and a stream of blood sprayed down on me. He gave a great roar and his thick fingers fastened on my throat. I was sucked into a black world shot across with blinding streams of light.
Just when it seemed I would sink into total oblivion the pressure on my neck was gone. So was the weight on my chest. The blackness cleared. Distantly, through the throbbing in my ears, I heard a police whistle. (I later learned it was Barrett calling for any help that might be nearby.) Then Barrett himself pounded through the door and joined Morris who had thrown both arms around Scroggs and hauled him away from me. By the time I sat up, they had him securely manacled.
The woman was still screeching at me. I pointed at her and managed to gasp, ‘Take her too! Where are the children?’
‘They came running out the door, sir!’ Morris told me. ‘But I already reckoned something was going on. We heard the woman yelling. The kids ran off down the street, gone to warn their grandfather, most like.’
‘We’ll pick him up later, sir!’ Barrett assured me. ‘He’s well known, is Jeb Fisher, and we won’t have any trouble finding him quickly.’
I was on my feet by now and able to take action. I ran to the stove, hooked open the little door in it and peered in. As I had guessed, the reason it was smoking so badly was because they had been burning wads of paper, or trying to. No doubt alarmed when he heard from his sister that the earrings were in police hands, Scroggs had decided to burn the bundle of IOUs taken from Clifford’s house. Any attempt to use them, once the hunt for him was on would be useless. The charred remains, blackened but still legible in parts, would hang him, anyway.
Chapter Eighteen
THANKS TO Billy Scroggs’s fist, one side of my face was swollen out like a balloon and had turned a colourful purple and yellow. I saw a gleam of satisfaction in Britannia’s eyes as she surveyed me.
She was being held in the women’s area of Newgate Prison. I sat at the table in the little room where she had been brought for questioning, and met her sardonic gaze. A brawny wardress stood at the wall behind her, hands folded, face impassive. Such light as entered through the narrow barred window was cold and grey, like the gown the wardress wore. Britannia, too, wore a drab prison garment. This lack of colour made me feel we formed a group in some black and white scene printed in a book.
‘It was a wicked thing you and your brother did, Britannia,’ I said. My voice was hoarse from having Scroggs’s hands clamped round my throat.
Britannia’s look of derision increased. ‘Old Clifford should have stayed upstairs. Then she wouldn’t have got hurt.’
‘Are you going to tell me it was your employer’s own fault your brother killed her?’
‘She should’ve stayed upstairs!’ Britannia repeated obstinately.
I sighed and wished my throat were not so sore. I had never had a single conversation with Britannia Scroggs that had been easy and this was to be no different, even without a painful throat. She subjected the world to her own distorted view, as if she looked at it through a prism, and could not be persuaded to see it differently. Leading the life she had led, this was perhaps not surprising. But one thing did surprise me.
‘You told me,’ I croaked, leaning towards her. ‘You said that Mrs Clifford had been good to you. That was after Sergeant Morris took you to identify her body.’
‘I know I said that,’ returned Britannia impatiently. ‘What did you expect me to say?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Britannia! She employed you. She gave you a room of your own. You lived there, all found, and had enough money to pay your mother’s rent for her wretched room! Why would you risk that? Why on earth would you collude in her murder?’
‘We didn’t mean to kill her!’ snapped Britannia. ‘She should’ve stayed upstairs. How many times have I got to tell you? Then she’d have been all right. She came downstairs, she saw Billy and she saw me standing at the desk. Billy had just got the lock open.’
‘Was he already in the house when Wellings called to see Mrs Clifford? Was he upstairs in your room?’
‘No,’ said Britannia. ‘He was outside in the yard, waiting until old Clifford went to bed. I let him in. I didn’t know she was going to come downstairs, did I?’
‘So you and your brother planned robbery. Even if things had gone differently, as I suppose you hoped they would, it was a treacherous act on your part. Let me tell you what you and Billy intended. Your brother would make off with whatever spoils he found, and you would go back upstairs until the next morning. Then you could have come down and pretend to be surprised there had been a burglary. Billy would have damaged the lock on the back door before he left so that it would look like a break-in. Mrs Clifford might have been suspicious. But she might have believed you had nothing to do with it; and you could have stayed there.’
‘No, I couldn’t have stayed there!’ shouted Britannia at me with such force that the wardress, alarmed, stepped forward.
I signalled to the woman to stay back. ‘Britannia,’ I said, ‘why could you not have stayed there? Did you think Mrs Clifford would not have believed in your innocence?’
In reply, Britannia thrust her hands out towards me. ‘Look at them!’ she ordered.
I found myself looking at her distorted knuckles and finger-joints.
‘They’re getting worse!’ said Britannia sullenly. ‘The pain of them sometimes makes me weep. Only I couldn’t show it, not until I’d gone to bed; because if old Clifford had seen me crying, she’d have wanted to know why. Then she’d have turned me away straight off! If I couldn’t work, she’d not have kept me for a day. A couple of times I broke dishes, because my hands were so stiff in the morning. She stopped the cost out of my wages. When I drew the picture of those earrings for you, it was all I could do not to scream out, it was so painful for me to do it. But I had to hide from you how bad it was, just as I had to hide it from old Clifford. You had to think there was nothing wrong with me, just like she did. You hadn’t to guess how desperate I was – me and Ma were. Billy, too. He’s got two little’uns and a wife. He couldn’t give Ma any money. We were in such a fix. And she had money. She had money in the house! There, just for the taking!’
There was a pause. Britannia’s words, ringing around the tiny room, faded away. I wondered just how much money Mrs Clifford had kept in the house. ‘How much?’ I asked Britannia. ‘How much money did Billy find?’
Britannia’s glowering looks worsened. ‘Not enough,’ she said. ‘You can believe me or not, but there wasn’t much cash there. She’d gone out earlier that day and she must’ve taken the money to the bank. Another night and we’d have done really well. But it was just our bad luck we didn’t find much that night. That’s what made Billy so angry, started him swearing and making threats of all sorts. The risk we were taking and for so little! It’s why he took the papers, signed by all the debtors. He thought the people named on them might like to buy them back for, say, a quarter of what was owed. After all, it would have been getting them cheap, and they could destroy them, so that no one would ever know they’d borrowed from a moneylender. Respectable families don’t like to think any of their relatives had got into debt. It makes all of them look bad, you know?’
I di
d know. The news that Edgar Wellings had been a client of Clifford had horrified his family, prompting the scenes described to me by my wife.
‘So, Billy lost his temper and battered Mrs Clifford to death. Then you – or Billy – one of you, took off her wedding ring and fob watch and pulled out her earrings.’
‘We had to have something,’ muttered Britannia, ‘and she didn’t need them no more. Billy was that angry still, I was afraid he’d turn on me. I told him we could sell the earrings and ring, and the little watch, just to calm him down. She was always looking at the little watch. Everything had to be done on time with her, like clockwork. She wasn’t easy to work for, you can believe that!’
‘You lied about the colour of Mrs Clifford’s earrings, claiming the stones were rubies instead of sapphires,’ I said after a pause. ‘Did you really think that would be enough to confuse us?’
‘Why not?’ snapped Britannia sulkily. ‘I made a good job of those drawings, didn’t I? I got an “eye”. They said so, at Sunday School.’
‘Too good a job, Britannia. We knew we had the right earrings and you must be lying about the stones.’
Britannia bit her lower lip and I noticed the chipped front tooth again. ‘It ain’t fair,’ she said.
Life wasn’t fair, she meant to say, or it had never been fair to her. It wasn’t an excuse for what she and her brother had done, but she would not be brought to agree. It was her own vanity regarding her skill at drawing that had led us to the truth; but that she was in any way responsible for the fact that both she and Billy were awaiting trial was another thing she and I would never agree on. In Britannia’s view, she herself, not Mrs Clifford, was the victim.
‘Tell me about moving the body.’ It was best to stick to the practical questions.
That gained me an exasperated look. ‘I had nothing to do with the moving of it. They did that. It had to be moved because otherwise I’d have seen it in the morning. I couldn’t have pretended I hadn’t seen it, could I? I had to pretend I didn’t know what had happened to her, wait a bit before I went to the police station. That was so Billy had a chance to get away, find a ship and leave the country for a few months. But he couldn’t find one that was taking on crew.’