Honor's Kingdom

by Parry, Owen

  “Do I take that to mean—”

  “Ha,” she repeated. “I wish I’d had me a dozen copies made of that one. Everybody in London wants their own.” She looked at Wilkie and smiled as if about to consume him. By which I do not imply any immodesty. “That little bit of fluff you saw going off? The swanky bit in lilac? She was after the very same thing.” She scowled triumphantly at the inspector. “Bawdy house, indeed.”

  “You sold it to her?” I asked in alarm.

  “Not hopping likely,” Mrs. Hepburn said. “It was already sold off this morning, hours ago.”

  “To whom?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t—”

  “I don’t remember any of my clients, Tiny. I trade in goods, not people. Don’t even look at a one of them, I don’t.” She glanced at Wilkie briefly, as if he were a fly that had annoyed her. “Tell that to your peeler friend there. Him and his bawdy houses. There ought to be a law against his sort.” Grunting, she added, “That one looks like he knows plenty about such houses, if you’re asking Lucy Hepburn.”

  Wilkie opened his mouth to speak, raising his empty hand as if it held a truncheon. Which it likely had for many a year, until his promotion above the uniformed service.

  I raced to speak before his words could blunder. “If you do not remember your customers, how is it you remember the lass who just went off?”

  “She wasn’t a customer.”

  “But you said she was after the watch.”

  “She didn’t get it. So she isn’t a customer.”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “Never saw her before in my life.”

  “Didn’t she introduce herself?”

  “My customers never introduce themselves. And a bit of that sort doesn’t need any introduction.”

  Reluctantly and with a pain near physical, I drew my purse from my tunic. First I produced a pound. And then another. When the woman’s eyes did not so much as flicker, I drew out a third.

  Oh, that was hard.

  I held the money just above the table. “And you do not remember a thing—nothing at all—about the purchaser of the watch?”

  She gave me a dismissive snort, pondered a moment longer, then said, “In my business, reputation is all a lady’s got for her advancement. A body needs to be trusted, front and back. And everyplace in between. Elsewise, she won’t never see the best customers come to her door. An honorable lady of the merchandise business don’t go telling her secrets, Tiny. Not for a stack of guineas.” She gave me a look a duchess might aim at a footman found sloven and negligent. “Let alone for a sniffle of pounds.”

  Stymied, I did not interfere when Wilkie next leaned in. “Now, I ’ave ’ad enough of your nonsense, Mrs. ’Epburn. If that’s your proper name, when all’s said and done. What would it do to your great reputation if them as you trade with knew you’d sold off a watch that ’ad only been pawned the day before? Without giving the rightful owner a chance to reclaim ’is treasure?”

  “He didn’t pawn it,” the woman said calmly. “He sold it to me outright.”

  Wilkie’s nostrils, black with hair, flared out in a swell of anger. “Well, let me inform you of this, then: The former owner, Mr. William Bounds, is dead. What do you say to that, mum?”

  Cool as mountain water, she answered, “Then it wouldn’t even matter if he’d pawned the watch. Would it?”

  With a look down at her embroidery, she added, “Can’t you gentlemen see that I’m conducting business? You’re interfering with my pursuit of lawful trade. After breaking in upon me rude as criminals.”

  Wilkie was hot. But, somehow, I led him out of those unhappy premises. Now you will say: “That woman was dishonest, such was plain, and she should not have been allowed to flout the law.” But I will tell you: Even Colin Campbell knew when the hour had come to effect a wise withdrawal, and Wellington retreated to gain time.

  I believed I had hit upon a strategy.

  Down the stairs we marched, parading past the screaming of that child. Twas quite a wail, from lungs most inexhaustible, and I wondered what the little girl must look like to have such power of voice at her command. Then on we went, back through the filthy passage and out of the close, waving away those flies inclined to follow us.

  “I’ll ’ave her up, I will,” Wilkie fumed. “I swear I’ll find a—”

  I laid my hand upon his arm to tut him. First of all, I am no friend to swearing, which is unChristian. Second, Wilkie was lurching off in the wrong direction.

  “Look you,” I said, for I needed his attention. Hot enough the fellow appeared to strike at me or anyone that drew near him. “Come with me for a moment, if you will. I want to try a thing that has occurred to me.”

  He followed, growling like a sullen hound.

  I led him back to the beggar fellow. Or should I say, the heel-reader? For I hoped to have the benefit of his skills.

  As we come up, the fellow turned his ruined eyes in our direction. His broken lips could not decide between a smile and a frown.

  “Amazed by my perfessional skills?” he asked. “Astonished, as Prince Albert himself admitted he was when I warned him to put his affairs in order? Or is it Bobby Peeler come back to bother a poor working man, accomplished perfessional though he has proven himself this werry hour?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I told him, drawing out my purse again, which was happy to have regained those three risked pounds, “I find myself in need of your professional services, sir. Upon two counts.” I brought out a shilling entire. “If you can satisfy me, you shall have a shilling for your performance.”

  “Now, if you’ll forgive me, your honor . . . I ain’t a performer of any kind. I’m a skilled perfessional. If you’re wanting performers, there’s a proper one just skipped on by us. A music-hall morsel, and proud as they come, all fancy and fussing and riled. Pained to step herself clear of the dirties she was. And not contented with her doings here-abouts, I’m judge enough to say. Why, didn’t the little belter sound—”

  “The White Lily of Kent!” I cried, all sudden. A shame it was, for I should have held my tongue.

  Inspector Wilkie gave me a look of bafflement. Twas clear he had forgotten.

  “I can’t tell you her name or such, your honor, for that’s not within the realm of the heel-reading art, but—”

  I was excited, and that is never good. I cut him off: “You’ve already earned the half of your wages. Now I have a harder question to put to you.”

  He straightened his posture under his crawling rags. “I likes a perfessional challenge. Go on, guv.”

  “How long have you been sitting here?”

  “Hours. Except when I had to step into the close there.” He gestured with a filth-encrusted finger.

  “How many hours?”

  He smiled a bit. Cracking open the scabs upon his lips. “I haven’t been paying attention to my watch, now, your honor, but—”

  Again, I plunged ahead in my enthusiasm. “Are you here-abouts regularly? Would you say you know the footsteps of the residents to a fair degree?”

  “Well, now . . . a fellow what is lacking his sight, even a perfessional man, keeps close to what’s familiar. I’m not a man to boast, your honor, but I think I know the steps of any man or beast this side of Covent Garden. And halfway up to the Tottenham Court Road.”

  “This morning, then. Did you hear anyone new go past? Any peculiar footsteps, perhaps? Someone who seemed in a hurry? A person on urgent business? Or anyone strange at all?”

  I had high hopes, for there were only two possible directions legs could take a person going into or coming out of Mrs. Hepburn’s close, and one, the more secretive way, led past the heel-reader. In the other direction, the lane ended in a bright commotion of trade.

  “Well,” the fellow said, “there was the Scotchman.”

  “A Scotsman?”

  “And a big one he was, at that.”

  “’Ere, ’ere,” Wilkie intervene
d. “Now ’ow on earth could you tell if ’e was Scotch? I doesn’t believe a word.”

  “Oh, a Scotchman’s easy as they come, Bobby Peeler.” Indeed, the fellow had the blithe confidence of a professional man, a doctor or a barrister or such. “He doesn’t walk, but swagger, your Scotchman. Unless he’s broken down. Then he creeps along, clutching his purse. And the less there is in it, the harder he clutches. Gives him a funny gait, to make you laugh. But the big ones, now, they walk like they’re climbing hills or slopping through their moo-ers. You can almost hear the heather brush their trows. When they got trows on proper.” He cocked his head, all pride. “We always uses a Scotchman as a test, for him what wants to apprentice to a master heel-reader and embrace the high art himself. If he doesn’t have the gift to tell a Scotchman right off, he’d only be an embarrassment to the perfession.”

  I dropped the shilling into his palm and started to move off, my thoughts a-boil.

  “And here I thought you was an honest man,” the fellow called after me.

  I paused. “You have your shilling, sir.”

  “But I solved two questions for you, didn’t I, your honor? And you said a shilling was my reward. So that would make two shillings.”

  The fellow was in the wrong, twas clear as day. And I do not misspeak when the matter concerns my funds. But I had such an excitement upon me that I gave him the second shilling without a quibble.

  Wilkie led the way toward the bright end of the alley, I supposed to save us a trip back through the labyrinth of despair. He wore a look of discomfort, like a man whose bowels are tardy in their business. Clear it was that his thoughts had not kept up. And he did not like it.

  “The fellow in the coffee house,” I began, intent upon soothing him. For I wanted a friend and ally, not a foe. “The one with the stinking breath who pointed us here to begin with. He mentioned a certain Polly Perkins, if you recall. ‘The White Lily of Kent.’ A singer in a penny gaff in Eastcheap . . .”

  Ah, yes. The light of recollection dawned.

  “That was ’er, then,” he said, in delayed astonishment.

  “And don’t you think there might be more to the business than an eel-man’s unrequited infatuation? Now that we’ve seen her where he was rid of the watch?”

  Wilkie stepped clear of a pile of waste and said, “I doesn’t like the smell of this one bit.”

  THE STREET AT THE END of the lane was bright and gay as a heathen bazaar, although it lacked the native’s sense of order. Twas a market for secondhand clothes. And third- and fourth-hand, too, by the look of things. Smelling of attics and cellars, but active as ten-year-old boys, old, bent Jews sold all that might be worn. They bought, too, from rag-men and gentlemen out of pocket, from young sons troubled by secret debts and ladies so shy of being seen that they failed to haggle up to a proper price. But twas the Jews that captured my attention—at least as much as I had left to spare. A different race they seemed from my acquaintance, Mr. Moses Feinberg, of our Washington, whose trade resembled theirs only as a palace resembles a slum. Clean and light and orderly, M. Feinberg & Sons made purchasing almost a pleasure, although I am one chary of expenditures. But here all reeked of scanty margins and fears but half forgotten. It seemed to me a monument to America, that Moses Feinberg might come so far in life, and even dress him like a proper gentleman, while here his brethren wore black frocks cut long and big, and shabby hats, and forelocks out of Mr. Shakespeare’s Venice. Of course, Britannia boasted Mr. Disraeli, who kept himself very fine. But he had turned from his ancestral faith.

  I have grown fond of our American freedoms, where even the Jew may claim his lawful rights. We cannot blame a man for having faults, if we block every path that leads to virtue. Besides, I find the Jew a peculiar fellow. Ferocious when he bargains, he is honest to a fault when the deal is done. No Jew has ever cheated me, and I cannot say the same of Christian men.

  I will admit I looked their barrows over, for I was in the market for a suit, and thought I might not need to pay full price. But all I saw were rags not fit for paupers.

  How is it England conquered half the world?

  Well, let that bide.

  Guiding me through the thin-pursed crowd, Inspector Wilkie turned toward an avenue where we might rejoin our conveyance. But our progress was interrupted by the urgency of a constable in his swallowtail.

  “Inspector!” he shouted across a brashness of boys. He pushed between a whisky-burned Irishman and a woman with the bitter look of a governess aged past her chances. “Inspector! Inspector Wilkie!”

  Inspector Wilkie drew up by a barrow that catered to fallen gents. In truth, the inspector’s own sober suit was worn from black to brown. I had marked him glancing over a display of re-whitened cuffs and collars and shirtfronts, although he had not stopped to look too closely. Perhaps he was ashamed of his pocket’s shallowness and would return when he might do business alone.

  “What’s the commotion, ’Iggins?” he asked. “Just what’s all this commotion?”

  The constable looked around at the crowd, which did not lack curiosity, then he drew us into an alley where cart mules bunched.

  “We’ve all been put to find you,” the constable said, “and to tell you they found the boy without ’is ’and. The one what you was looking for. Under a bush in Regent’s Park he was, where ’e scared Lady Wilmot to screaming.”

  “Dead?” Wilkie asked.

  “Dead don’t tell the ’alf of it, Inspector.”

  Twas then we might have made a dreadful blunder, for we shared an impulse to rush to Regent’s Park. But there are times when I almost believe in the wisdom of Presbyterians, for some things seem predestined in this life. A gentleman of worn degree passed by the mouth of the alley, displaying a bulk to rival Mr. Barnaby, an acquaintance of mine and a champion doer at table. This strolling gentleman almost might have made a match for Mrs. Hepburn. A very John Bull he looked, and three times over.

  Let me explain the importance of his passing.

  With a boy cut up and murdered, it was left to me to make an idle comment. The girthy fellow had led my thoughts astray, as thoughts will go, despite our best intent.

  “You must see all sorts in your duties,” I said to the policeman. “That Mrs. Hepburn, the pawn-mother, for example.” And here my spoken manners failed to answer, for I fear my words slipped out unkindly crude. “I’ve never seen a woman quite so fat.”

  The constable gave me a baffled look and even pushed his topper back off his forehead. Next, he lowered his whiskers down onto his collar.

  “Mrs. ’Epburn?” he said. “Don’t make me larf. Mrs. ’Epburn’s thin as a tinker’s dog.”

  I did not say another word to anyone, but took off at the closest thing to a run that a man with a bothered leg and a cane might manage.

  THE ENORMOUS WOMAN WAS GONE, of course. For we were not expected to return. She had taken her embroidery, but all else lay in place.

  I looked down the long row of locked cabinets and chests.

  “They will want opening,” I said.

  Wilkie, who lagged behind in his deductions, assumed a wary look.

  “That’s private property,” he said. “We can’t go—” Then he understood as well as I did. He even reached for a lock and began to tug it. But that would never do.

  “Constable,” I said to the fellow, Higgins, who had followed us as a good policeman will, “I presume you know the neighborhood. Might you find us an iron bar, or something of the like? Better still, two or three of them?”

  He took off his topper and scratched his curls, then submitted his perplexity to Wilkie. “I’d ’ave to turn to a fellow suspected of all manner of criminalities, Inspector. A Grub Street ’ack named Peters what’s gone bad. I know ’e’d ’ave all sorts of wicked implements.”

  “Well, do it, ’Enry. Go do it, for blue, bloody blazes, and stop wasting time,” Wilkie told him. For he was hot now, too, and feared the worst.

  Less determined fellows might have given
up the task, for hard work it was. But Wilkie was my equal in perseverance. After the constable returned with the instruments required, the three of us broke open one trunk or cabinet after another, finding each as empty as the last. Except for the dust and insects, living and dead, there was nothing at all in any of the compartments. But we kept at our labors without pause, though it cost us many a pinch and bruise and splinter.

  We found her in a seaman’s chest, after an hour’s sweating. It did not take an expert of Mr. Archibald’s stature to see that she had not been dead a day.

  “That’s ’er,” the constable confirmed. “That’s ’er, all right. Lucy ’Epburn, that is. She won’t be mourned, I can tell you.”

  The wizened body lay in the trunk, hardly larger than a child’s corpse. The loose and ancient skin of her neck had been cut half through by the bite of the Thuggee cord.

  “Well,” Inspector Wilkie began, “and what am I to think now, Major Jones? Should I be looking for ’eathen ’Indoos what murders for pagan pleasure? Or should I be after Scotchmen with bagpipes and—”

  My heart sank at the poverty of my mental faculties. I had missed one chance after another. With hardly half a dozen chests remaining, off I went at my crabby trot again, awkward on the stairs as I always am and chased along by the ceaseless wail of that child in the shut-up room. Out of the close I went for the second time that day, turning down the street in the direction that should have taken me straight to the blind heel-reader.

  He was gone, of course.

  A dozen things seemed too clear for my Christian comfort, yet nothing added up to any sense.

  Was I supposed to chase a kilted phantom? Or look for Indian murderers in the alleys? Was I being put off one scent and onto another? If so, which trail was which? And who was who? I could not banish the thought of that child’s hand. And now the rest of his body lay in wait.

  I have a son of my own, our little John. I see him in every child that passes by. In this hard life of ours, so unforgiving.

  Nearing despair, I caned my way down to a noisy clutch of women. I could not tell from their tones if they were having it out or just conversing merrily. Their chatter rang loud and harsh in a Welshman’s ear, for we seek music in each whispered word.