SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman

by Francis Selwyn

  Throughout the drive from Paddington Green, Bella had edged slowly closer towards him on the buttoned plush of the hansom seat, her blue eyes wide with wonder and her plump little hands clasping and unclasping as she almost cooed with excitement at what lay ahead. Verity, huffing and puffing from time to time, managed to keep himself disengaged until they reached the cab rank in Portland Place. There Stringfellow climbed down from his perch and limped round to the door. Bella prudently withdrew to her own corner of the seat.

  "Now, Miss Bella," said Stringfellow soberly, "you ain't to forget you're a soldier's daughter and will act as such at all times!"

  "Yes, pa," said Bella demurely.

  "You may 'ave to defend your honour in a 'ouse of iniquity."

  "I don't mind that," said the girl blandly, "not when it's to help Mr Verity rescue a poor, fallen creature from her misery."

  Stringfellow cleared his throat huskily. "Well, miss. You're to do as Mr Verity tells you, and not contradict him." "Oh yes, pa!"

  And then Stringfellow turned to his other passenger. "Take care of 'er, Verity."

  "Trust me, Stringfellow," said Verity with faint reproach. "If the Rifle Brigade can't take care of her, no one can."

  Stringfellow adjusted the strap of his wooden leg a little and watched "the soldier and his doxy" amble away towards Langham Place. Verity spotted Samson patrolling the opposite pavement. As a precaution, he put his arm round Bella's waist and turned hrs face down towards her.

  " 'ere! " he said a moment later, "it's only pretending! "

  "Oh," she said forlornly, "is it?"

  "Yes. Now, pay attention. This is the house. Do just as you've been told and don't fear. There's a man called Coggin inside, but he hasn't ever seen me. Another one, called Tyler, I have met in the course of duty, but it was only once, and in the dark."

  At the top of the steps, Bella banged the brass knocker with a resolute little fist. It was Coggin who answered.

  "I should like a room for an hour," said Bella coquettishly, "if it ain't a inconvenience."

  "Oh, should you?" said Coggin thickly. "And 'oo might you be?"

  "A 'igh-conditioned lady," said Bella firmly, "and I ain't particular what I pay."

  Though it was not in her instructions, she gave a backward nod of her head at Verity, for Coggin's benefit and winked at the bully. Coggin looked again at the girl with her fair hair, plump cheeks and lively eyes. Perhaps he saw in her a future apprentice of the house, who might be worth a small fortune to her masters.

  "Two sovereigns hire," he said ungraciously. "And a sov for the maid to dress you afterwards.

  "Much obliged," said Bella. "And I can fasten my own stays."

  " 'ave it yer own way," said Coggin. "It's still three sovs."

  She handed him the coins and he stood back to let them cross the threshold. They followed him up the oval staircase to the shabby second-floor room, where Verity and the search detail had found the middle-aged man with his two adolescent street girls.

  "In there," said Coggin, "and don't overstop the hour, a-cos there ain't a lock."

  Then Bella and Verity sat side by side on the soiled counterpane, listening to Coggin's footsteps fading down the stairs. Verity began to unlace his military boots.

  " 'ave we got to undress in earnest?" Bella inquired innocently.

  "Only boots, miss. Make less noise walking."

  He tip-toed slowly out on to the landing and looked over the polished banister rail. The house lay in silence, but to have called out to a prisoner in the attic rooms would have roused the echoes and Coggin or Tyler as well.

  "Keep watch!" he breathed in Bella's ear, and the girl took his place at the rail. Verity moved in silence up the next oval of the staircase and confronted the wrought-iron wicket-gate at he top. There was no way through it or over it. Unlike the day of the search, it was now firmly locked. He examined the side where it joined the banister rail, which at least offered a possibility of climbing out above the forty-foot drop of the stair well and round the side.

  On that side the banister was divided by a smooth pillar of hollow wood, the thickness of Verity's body, which ran from the marble tiles of the vestibule to the very top of the staircase. The iron post of the wicket-gate was bolted to it. It was possible, in theory for a man to climb round by spreadeagling himself, one foot on the sloping banister rail on either side of the pillar and his hands pressed tight to the sides of the polished trunk itself. Then he would have to balance on one foot for an instant, while he slid himself carefully round the vertiginous drop by pressure of his hands. He might do it if he could banish from his mind the thought of the terrible emptiness drawing him backwards to his death on the marble floor which lay like a deep pit below him.

  Verity was well aware that his build was ill-suited to acrobatics of this sort. But he took a deep breath and pulled himself up on to the lower side of the banister rail, where he was still able to clutch one of the iron bars of the wicket for support. Then, hugging the smooth wooden pillar with his other arm, he edged his legs towards it. Reluctantly he let go of the iron wicket and saw, as he moved his arm, the tinted light of the glass dome colouring the marble floor that showed between his feet like water at the bottom of a deep well. His left foot slipped a little on the well-polished rail and he clutched the wooden pillar frantically in an attempt to retain his balance. The blood was pounding in his head and his breath was rasping like a saw in the great stillness.

  He braced his chest against the pillar and took a wide, sideways stride with his right foot, finding the far side of the banister but gaining no purchase on it. All his holding power was in his arms, yet to move at all he must release his grip on the pillar. He clung tighter, spreadeagled with his back to the dizzy drop of the stair well. He felt suddenly that he dared not move a limb without falling, and then he heard Bella's frightened whisper.

  "Go on, Mr Verity! You must go on!"

  The sound of her voice restored his determination. For a second or two he must trust to balance rather than to grip. He released the pillar with his left hand, drew his left foot across, and almost threw himself on to the upper part of the staircase. As he got up, he saw with amazement that Bella had shed her lavender-blue skirt and was standing in long white pantelets on the other side of the iron gate.

  "Take these," she said urgently, thrusting the discarded skirts through the bars, "I can't climb with them on!"

  "I ain't sure you should try it all," said Verity nervously.

  "A soldier's daughter not do it?" she hissed. "Gammon !"

  With Verity's webbing belt round her waist as a safety harness, and Verity holding her by it, she slipped easily round the pillar. Then, with her skirts over her arm, she followed him softly along the little passageway towards the attic rooms. He stopped at the first of the two bolted doors and slid back the iron fastenings. When the door swung open, Bella gasped in astonishment.

  "Oh!" she said passionately, "Oh, the poor creature!" Putting down the skirts she flew to the naked figure of Jolie on the bed, who was held by a stout strap pinioning her wrists under the bed itself. Verity slid a leather handled knife from his sheath and cut through the strap. As the naked girl turned on her side, Bella stared with incredulity at the raised welts which marked her bottom and thighs. Jolie looked at her visitors indifferently. "And who might you be?"

  "Never you mind introductions, miss," said Verity, "I flashed you a signal yesterday afternoon, and though you mayn't understand the art of the heliograph, it was to tell you you should be got out today."

  She curled up against the wall, pulling away from him.

  "I tried getting out. Look what I got for it. I'd sooner have me throat cut first than get me arse leathered like that again!"

  "You'll get worse than leathered if you don't do as you're told," said Verity, the tone of his voice betraying him. "Bloody jack!"

  She sat upright, covering her little breasts with her hands, she was shivering with fright.

  "Private-c
lothes detail," said Verity superfluously.

  "I ain't going! I know what you want! Leave me be! Leave me!"

  "Don't you find the ghost of Thomas McCaffery walks in this room of a night?" asked Verity gently. Jolie began to weep.

  "They'll 'ang me!" she sobbed, "they will! I knew it'd come!"

  "You can't be hanged for telling lies in court, miss, 'owever much you may deserve it. And you was only an affidavit."

  "Affadavy?"

  "You wasn't called as a witness. It wasn't important evidence."

  There was a pause.

  "Are you sure I couldn't be 'ung?" she asked furtively. Bella intervened.

  "Course you can't!" she said knowledgeably, "anyone knows that! Go on, put on those skirts and things."

  While the exchange of clothes was taking place, Verity slipped out of the room and drew back the bolts on the other closed door. When he opened the door itself, the stench from the warm little room was insupportable. Ellen Jacoby lay on the mattress in the ragged petticoat which she had lived and slept in for the past two weeks. She had perspired constantly in the hot attic and the sweat had left thick ridges of grime across her forehead and chin. Her eyes failed to focus on Verity, but she mumbled something and sank back on the mattress again. It was out of the question to attempt to take her from the house. Without touching her, Verity swung the end of the bed round so that an oblong of sunlight through the barred window fell on to the mattress and illuminated the girl's body. She lolled there stupidly, one eye badly swollen. From a white-blanco'd haversack, Verity produced a small black box, which extended to reveal itself as Samson's Captain Fowkes camera. In that one small square of the room, thought Verity, there was just enough light to do the job.

  When he had finished, he swung the bed back, bolted the door, and returned to the other room. Bella sat on the bed in her freshly-laundered underclothes, while Jolie appeared in the lavender-blue dress, bonnet, and veil. It was far from a perfect fit but this, to some extent, improved the disguise.

  "Now, Miss Bella," said Verity gently, "you got to be left here for a little while, but only for a little while. Take heart and never say die! It won't be long before I come back and the men downstairs ain't likely to come up here before this evening. If they do, you got a whistle. Blow bravely, and our friends down in the mews shall hear you."

  "I ain't afraid, Mr Verity," she said softly.

  He took her little hands between his own large warm palms. Then he motioned Jolie out, followed her, and closed the outer bolts. He helped Jolie to climb the gate first, and repeated his own hazardous negotiation of the wooden pillar. They walked slowly down the stairs. Tyler stood ox-like in the hall below them.

  "Drop the veil," said Verity softly, and the girl obeyed.

  Tyler saw them coming down the final curve of the stairs, and he went into the little parlour to seek instructions from Coggin. By the time that Verity and the girl had reached the door, Tyler had reappeared to open it, staring incuriously at the couple as they passed through the arch of it.

  " 'appy to see you again, miss, when your sergeant's given you the chuck," he murmured as the girl slipped by him. Then the door closed and they stood in the street. Verity led Jolie round the first corner into Mortimer Street and subjected her to a determined catechism.

  "Now, miss," he said, gripping her by the upper arm, "let's have an understanding. You stand here, free, only because a good, brave girl has taken your place in there, so that you might be rescued. If you want to save 'er, in turn, and you want to save Ellen Jacoby, you must act as I say."

  "I ain't sayin' I won't," she said softly. "She's the only chum I've got, Ellen is."

  "You know what's being done to her in there?"

  Jolie nodded.

  "She ain't long for this world," she said, "that's why I tried to get out when I 'eard that Ned Roper wasn't coming back, after the sessions."

  "Would you tell Ned Roper what's being done to Nell Jacoby?"

  "Fat chance of that!"

  "Would you tell him if you could?"

  " 'e wouldn't believe me!"

  "Would you tell him if you had the chance, miss?"

  "Not if I've got to be leathered again," she whimpered.

  "You won't be leathered again. But Nell may be, if you don't help her."

  "All right, then," she said uncertainly.

  Verity took her by the arm and led her out of Mortimer Street and across the road.

  "Mr Samson!"

  Samson paused in mid-stride and turned round. He looked blank at first, until Verity removed the forage cap.

  "Verity! You can't go round in them things! You ain't a soldier anymore! It's an offence!" "Mr Samson, do you know this young person?" Samson eyed Jolie. "Yes," he said, "sorry to say I do." "Then you'd best just listen to what she has to say." Samson listened.

  "Now," said Verity, "she must be let speak to Ned Roper."

  "Must she?" said Samson sardonically. "Ned Roper is safely locked in one of the old refractory cells at Newgate. He goes to Chatham tomorrow, to the hulks, and he'll be bound for Australia on the next tide."

  "She'll have to speak to him today," said Verity undeterred. "There's Bella Stringfellow in there, risking her life and worse, so that you may 'ave all the glory of the thief-taking for every crime these villains have committed. You must take this young person to Newgate. They'll let you through the governor's house and give you a turnkey."

  "I can't go to Newgate!" said Samson miserably, "it's Langham Place and you that I'm to keep a watch upon."

  "Albert Samson," said Verity sternly, "if you want to watch me, you must come to Newgate. In twenty minutes more I shall be ready. A chemist at Regent Circus will have brightened some plates for me and I shall be in a proper uniform. Now, you ain't got so much of your watch left to go that an inspector is likely to come by here. If he should, why, you may say you saw me acdng suspiciously, and you thought it wise to follow me."

  "Look 'ere. Verity," said Samson pleadingly, "ain't you supposed to be attending the railway inquiry this afternoon?"

  Verity ignored the question. He said, "You may accompany me and this young person to Newgate or not, Mr Samson, just as you choose. However, if I should reach Newgate, and you ain't there, I shall take a walk down so far as Blackfriars Bridge, and there I shall take your Captain Fowkes camera and pitch it in the Thames."

  20

  "Don't it seem rum?" said Verity conversationally, "to think that all these crowds in the street is walking along free and happy no more than a yard away from poor mortals in irons who may all be on the hulks or the gallows this time tomorrow? Nothing but a few inches of wall between the two."

  Samson grunted as, with Jolie almost running to keep pace, the two sergeants plodded up Newgate Street, past the small grated windows set high in the prison wall. They walked quickly towards the main facade of George Dance's famous prison, a classical design built in massive blocks of stone, looking like the fortified palace of some Renaissance prince.

  At the door of the governor's lodging, Samson rang the bell and handed the servant his warrant card. Bodi he and Verity were now dressed in familiar black coats and tall hats. Verity having changed from his military uniform in Stringfellow's cab before they left Langham Place. The servant returned, the two men and the girl were admitted to a little room where two clerks on high stools worked away at their ledgers, as though it had been a counting house rather than a prison office. One of the clerks presented a book for the signatures of the three visitors.

  After a few minutes' wait, they were joined by a tall man of clerical appearance, dressed in black and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. But for his heavy bunch of keys, he might have been a clergyman rather than a turnkey. As soon as Samson had explained their business, this new arrival led the visitors down a passage, past the prison lodge, its walls hung with sets of leg irons and manacles and casts of murderers' heads. The heavy oak gate beyond, bound with iron and studded with nails, opened into the prison itself. At every
turning of the passage after that there seemed to be yet another barred gate, which the turnkey unlocked, and then locked again as soon as the party had passed through.

  Verity had never before been inside the famous prison. He found that it was possible, from the few small windows which they passed, to see down into the old paved yards, where prisoners awaiting trial for lesser felonies spent their days wandering more or less at will. One corner of each yard was walled across and roofed with bars, through which the families of the prisoners were allowed to talk to the inmates. In the women's yard, there was a small crowd of visitors at the bars, but in the men's yards Verity saw only a very young girl, shivering in her thin clothes as she spoke to an elderly man who squatted dejectedly against the wall.

  Leaving the yards, they passed several of the wards where men or women lived together in groups of twenty or thirty, their sleeping mats hung upon the walls during the day to make more space. In one of these bare, whitewashed rooms, the men had already sat down to their dinner of stewed beef and coarse bread.

  At length, the turnkey unlocked two massive gates, set at a distance of about twelve feet apart, and led them across the famous press yard, where prisoners were prepared for the gallows on the morning of their execution. Then the party entered the condemned ward with its refractory cells. The passage ended with an iron grille from pavement to vaulting. Several yards beyond this was a similar grating, forming part of the wall of a room into which a prisoner could be led from the cells. In the space between the two sets of bars, a prison guard patrolled to and fro. The turnkey who had led them to this point called out to the guard.