I breathed deep. “If my witnesses can tell that Enquiry what they have told me, we shall need your judicial experience to unravel the truth behind their tales. It may be darker than anyone has imagined. May I speak confidentially?”
Approaching the bench, I passed over my deposition to Gladstone, a document I intended as incendiary. He read my notes swiftly. He had had prior view of the statistics and other documents, but not my conclusions.
The evidence I outlined went beyond prostitution. Coercion, kidnap, blackmail and Jeffcoat’s discoveries. It would not be politic, nor safe, to reveal in open court the wider implications of our researches. As the investigations advanced, we would pass on the evidence.
“I see no objection. Indeed, the sooner we begin an Enquiry, the more evidence will remain admissible.” His eyes flickered around. In the gallery sat Disraeli, alongside Skittles’s duke; but a Select Committee transcends normal party politicking. He nodded. “We shall do our damnedest.”
Thank goodness for Gladstone and his oratory. With eloquent restraint, he there and then persuaded the Select Committee they must instigate a Judicial Enquiry. This Enquiry would be open to MPs and public, but with an injunction against newspaper reports, in order to protect our witnesses, due to the delicate nature of the evidence, with so many conflicts of public and private interest. He went on to propose Lord Chief Justice Fairchild, President of the Queen’s Bench Division, as presiding judge.
* * *
Outside, the fog was hanging in, like a headache. Reporters hung around, waiting to descend on Jeffcoat and me.
Payne plucked me by the sleeve. “What the hell are you up to?”
I swallowed. “You asked me to turn over stones.”
“Stones, not boulders.” He was trying to maintain a jovial tone.
“Why pose a question, if you knew the answer you required?” I shrugged. “You’ve mugs aplenty you can squeeze into line, sir. No lies, you said. No fudging.”
He turned to Jeffcoat, his wrath harder to contain. If I was ungovernable, he thought he had him in his pocket. “Solly, what’s going on?”
Jeffcoat said, reasonably enough, that we had suspicions we could not yet prove, and hoped the Committee would give us grace to pursue them. We would report to him, as soon as we knew what we had uncovered. This evasion was unfaultable, and we made our escape.
Behind us, J.W. Brodie sidled up to Payne, his ash grey hair dark beside the commissioner’s white mutton chops. I looked back, surprised to see him. I’d imagined Brodie far removed from such mundanity; but our investigation had drawn him from his underground lair. While Payne blustered, smoothing his whiskers energetically, Brodie stared coolly after me. Beside Payne’s bulk, he seemed small. On his shoulders, though, he balanced the weight of public opinion, tilting it back and forth at will.
* * *
Gladstone prevailed. The decision was made in minutes. He banged his gavel with a grim satisfaction. “Sergeant Lawless will deliver his evidence and witness list to the Enquiry. If the judge accepts, it may begin forthwith.”
Sir Richard Payne was furious. At the worst, he had imagined an internal enquiry, with himself as chair and Mauve as pet solicitor, and it would be sewn up by lunchtime on day one. I had rumbled this plan just in time.
A word to Skittles’s friends had done the trick. For Skittles had had friends on both sides of the House, of course, in upper and lower chambers, not least Mr Gladstone and her spoony-eyed duke. These two had spread word of the ill done to their darling, swaying parliamentary colleagues on both sides to sign up for this minor Committee and raise a fuss. The whole thing was cast as an homage to Skittles. Justice Fairchild accepted within the hour and tabled the Enquiry to start the following week.
Fairchild was that rare thing in Westminster, an honest soul. He had qualified up north, far from the cankered claws of the establishment—and that stroke of luck would prove momentous. Risen to prominence by his own virtues, he surrounded himself with like-minded folk. Throughout the Enquiry, the clerk and ushers impressed with their impartiality. The press, annoyed at their exclusion, raised scandals over the junior counsels; complaints were made, complaints were dismissed. I prayed that the newspapers’ malign spell would be quelled. Only thus, the truth would out.
If Sir Richard had expected a murmur, I had given him a roar.
* * *
The newspapers, stung by Gladstone’s slap in the face, began a campaign of cheap insinuations. From low-brow pamphlets to distinguished broadsheets, they ignited a debate. Men and men’s antics. Femininity versus feminine decorum. Polite society against the Great Social Evil.
Brodie’s rags never quite said the police were in cahoots with the judiciary. They never quite revealed depositions from the “closed” court. But they hinted like hell. They hinted at unsavoury collusions, questionable deals and disreputable practices, hidden from the public, filed, and whitewashed.
That was Brodie’s way of punishing our misdemeanours.
I no longer cared. Sir Richard might be angry as he liked; he no longer spoke to me. If everybody tried to save their own skin, we’d get nowhere. Jeffcoat and I, we were ready to fall.
Skittles’s duke stopped me that first day outside the court. He thanked me for my efforts, and he agreed to testify, which was exactly the kind of courage we needed. They might do for Groggins and lock up Dugdale, they might make Cora vanish, and silence even Felix, innocent though he was; but they couldn’t keep us all quiet.
WARNING
Fortunate that I kept irregular hours, and kept no paperwork at home. The sinister men scared the willies out of my old landlady, and broke my best china. Scared enough, I took my blanket and pillow and moved in to Scotland Yard. I had avoided this expedient lodging in my early days, preferring my own company. Now, apart from the snoring, the alarum calls and Jeffcoat’s cat, I liked it well—though the roof leaked.
The sinister men tracked me down the next day in Mrs Boulton’s coffee house. They came through the fog without my spotting them; it was weeks since we’d seen the sun. I knew them from the hospital. The leader slipped into the booth opposite me.
“We have an offer to make you, Sergeant.” Quite who “we” were, he did not make clear; what I was to do, or avoid doing, was never stated. But the gist was clear. My life would be carefree only if I desisted from these foolish investigations. “Give it a rest. Vanish gracefully away. Enjoy life in the countryside. Back in Scotland, why not? With a little financial salve to recompense you for your troubles.”
I pushed my cup away. “Why don’t you vanish up your own arse? Tell your master, whoever he may be, that if he’s nothing to hide, nothing will come out.” My attempt at an exit was blocked by his colleague’s bulk in the doorway.
The seated man smiled tightly. “You’ve had your offer. Let’s pray you see sense. You shouldn’t like a proper warning. Like your friend Felix had.”
Off they went, the threat of violence hanging in the air. When I popped into Kate Hamilton’s that same evening, these same villains were at the bar. I wheeled straight around and fled. I must watch my back. Mostly, we police move around in a law-abiding reverie. It was timely for me to be reminded how most people live, not by law or morality, but at the whim of fear and brute force.
M—S—L—
Miss Villiers had at last written back, about the coded titles and about Felix’s book.
The Criminal Prisons of Italy, volume II, was hard indeed to find, though such a success in its day; if I could attend the dreaded aunt’s charitable book swap on the vernal equinox in Petersfield, Hampshire, she would strive to secure me a copy.
As for the title M—S—L—, she had scoured the stack in search of likely abbreviations. Her surmised solution was uncertain, but rather delicate to commit to paper. Ruth’s prevarication was inconvenient. Would it connect Groggins’ labours with the tome on Brodie’s shelf?
I visited Molly at the Adelphi Arches, to plan her deposition for the Enquiry. I complained about Miss Villiers�
� contrary evasion.
“Attend her blasted book swap, then.” Molly shook her head. “Promise me.”
The two of them had been plotting; it was irksome that Ruth communicated more with Molly than with me. “If I can, if I can.”
“Miss Bilious has her reasons, though you may be blind to them.” Molly sniffed. “Tell me more of these coded titles.”
I mentioned neither Groggins nor Brodie, but I wrote out the two mysterious titles: M—S—L— and—as best I remembered—Eflsym.
“You loofish ecipol yob,” Molly laughed. “Ain’t I taught you nothing?”
Eflsym. I kicked myself. Backslang. I was missing letters, but it could be backslang: myslfe, likely My S__ Lfe. At Molly’s insistence, I wrote then and there, asking Ruth to look up My Something Life in the museum stack. Did such a volume exist?
She replied by return post, rather sportively, how pleased she was that I’d worked out so much. She had already worked out so much. The volume My Secret Life was not listed in the catalogue—but I was not the first to request it. She could explain no further on paper but gladly in person.
Was I in for a roasting? If Ruth had tracked down a copy of the tales that tickled Groggins, she would look at my nose for seeking such filth. The darker truth behind it all, of course, she could not know.
I had better go to her blasted aunt’s blasted book swap.
FURTIVE PLEASURES
When they found Cora, Darlington was distraught. It was the last straw for him, seeing her dragged out of the river, belly swollen, that matchless body ruined by the filthy Thames. It didn’t do to think of her last moments, jumping from the parapet.
I took him straight from mortuary to pub. As we passed the Evans, where hoofers stood at the stage door smoking, he ogled every skirt. The 9.23 Club would straighten him out. Strange, that my dream of befriending Felix had proved impossible; here instead I was presenting Darlington, the debauchee. His eyes were raw with sleeplessness. Reading the memoirs had infected his brain, and he was a dreadful bore, making our eyes water recounting the denouement of Lucretia, or The Delights of Cunnyland.
“Does erotic reading sate a man’s urges,” he insisted, “or stimulate them?”
Collins couldn’t resist. “Is my Woman in White a provocation to murder?”
“That is hardly the same,” I said. “Your books are entertainments; but these tales are obsessions, for some.”
“I don’t doubt.” Collins glanced at Darlington. “The Obscene Publications Act has only heightened the thrill. Would I wish my servants to read this salacious stuff?”
I laughed. “Or your mistress?”
Darlington coughed. My candour embarrassed him, though his reading matter didn’t. “Drive me potty, these stories do. Can’t sleep. Sensual visions all around me.”
“Laudanum,” Collins declared. “That’ll do it. Good for the clap, and all.”
I laughed. This was Collins’s remedy for everything. Damn it, his fictional characters were all on opiates.
Collins measured out a dose, which Darlington took, with a shudder. He then handed over the whole bottle, to my discomfort. “It’s above board, Lawless. Elevation, the Patent One Night Cough Syrup. Most morphinomaniacs do not break the law, only the bank. I prescribe a teaspoonful at bedtime, Darlington. Beware sullied goods. A Chinaman, Appoo, gets me mine. He beats his woman, but he’s a connoisseur. Buy from any old lush, and it’s curtains.” He rolled his eyeballs up in their sockets.
The next day, Darlington was rejuvenated. “Grateful to you, Watchman, old man.”
“I didn’t give it to you,” I said.
“You’re the broker,” he grinned. “Anyway, I slept like a baby.”
* * *
The Enquiry summonses were issued. All very well for those with addresses; my more itinerant witnesses I visited in person. Molly put the first steps of our plan into motion, and we ran through her routine, for she was my second witness.
Money was tight, paying urchins for watching Quartern Mews and doxies for stories at Mrs Boulton’s. I had thought Sir Richard would not approve my latest expense sheet. He did worse; he approved it, so I would keep spending, then bullied the clerks not to pay up.
Felix no longer needed constant care, but he could not return to Quarterhouse, with its corkscrew stairs and regulations. They helped arrange his transfer to the Clapham House for Incurables. Felix’s cheque I made out to them, to pay for his upkeep in private rooms there.
MISDIRECTION (ENQUIRY I)
Molly entered the courtroom at her ease. She shook hands with the usher and nodded to the gallery, as a music hall comedian might take the stage. She benefited from following a dry presentation of the figures for prostitution, gathered by myself and all my helpers. These numbers drew murmurs of surprise, and Sir Richard’s wrath. Though incomplete, these already far outstripped the 1857 charts, indeed, any statistics in his time as commissioner.
Knowing that MPs and judges move in exalted circles, I had arranged for experts to speak on prostitution, exploitation and theft, for you can’t beat the word from the horse’s mouth. I felt a pang of regret: inviting Molly was a step too far, for all her bumptious chaunter.
As she reached the bench, a little figure with a fake beard stumbled into the courtroom. The drunken sot fell on the usher, in a move I recognised from the street. General hilarity. I hurried over, as the usher set him upright. The drunk pulled at his beard and winked at me. He sauntered across the room, pointing at a couple of gents in the gallery, who shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Bumping into Molly, he entered the witness stand and stood swaying comically, as if about to pass out.
“What have you to say for yourself?” Lord Chief Justice Fairchild only now looked up from his notes. “Lawless? Is this your expert witness?”
The drunkard tugged his beard, searching for words.
“No, sir.” I sprang forward. “I’ll remove the offending personage.”
Strangely cooperative as I dragged him out, the drunk uttered not a sound. Out in the corridor, the beard came off, and I saw, by God, it was the Pixie. I demanded the usher’s wallet, which she had lifted. She gave me to understand that she no longer had it, but I shouldn’t worry. I told her I wanted a word with her; if she would pop by the Yard later, I would make it worth her while.
Molly had taken the stand. She waited ebulliently.
Justice Fairchild smiled kindly. “Have you nothing to say, young lady?”
“Plenty.” She scratched her nose. “But I think it best not speak till spoken to.”
“A wise policy. You are our expert on misdirection. Is that right?”
She spread her hands. “Exemplar is what I offered. If you wanted a diddling expert, you should’ve called Noddle McDevitt or Jezzer the Stick. But an exemplar, My Lord, I can present.”
Fairchild wrinkled his nose, amused. “Go ahead, young lady.”
“All done, My Lord.” She frowned. “That’s the point.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t followed you.”
“I should bleeding hope not, or I’d be a poor sell. I’ll take you through, straightways first, then back through the chicanery.”
Molly shuffled a deck of cards with the dexterity born of wasted youth. The front row of politicians picked cards from her splayed deck. She bade them follow her every move. One muttered about normal procedure; Molly gibed that he’d never fathom underworld tricks if she proceeded normally.
A joke, a jape, a lary look, and Molly transformed the court into Wilton’s Music Hall when the ships are in. Cards were extracted from earlobes, from the clerk’s inkwell, and from the junior counsel’s wig.
With a finishing fanfare, Molly flourished five cards before us. “Gentlemen, are these, or are these not, your cards?”
The judge looked crestfallen. “Oh. Afraid not, old bean.”
The others made similar apologies. With each admission, Molly deflated further.
There was a silence. I felt more shamed for Molly and he
r failure than for wasting the Enquiry’s time. Yet I recognised something theatrical about her sobs.
“Unless of course…” She raised an accusing finger. “Unless you thieving theologists have filched ’em. What’s that poking out your poche, good sir?” The finger of doom fell on junior counsel. He was so taken in by her theatrics that he did a proper double take. He took the card from his top pocket with astonishment, muttering. “But, gentlemen.” He leapt, quite improperly, to his feet, crying, “Gentlemen, this is my card!”
The MPs in the gallery, to general hilarity, all discovered their cards secreted about their persons. Except for Justice Fairchild himself, who look bamboozled and a little left out. “And my card, young lady?”
She eyed him, amused. “Yours, Lord Chief Justice, is in the hands of justice.”
It took the judge a few moments to notice the statue above his head, a statue representing Justice herself. Her blindfold looked painfully tight, her sword blunt but heavy, and upon her scales of justice—rested his card.
After Molly’s hand had been nearly shaken off by the gallery bigwigs, the judge recovered his decorum. “Which of us spotted where the trick took place?”
“Come on, gents.” Molly giggled. “I told you fair and square.”
The judge turned to her. “Hold on. You said at the start it was already done.”
“Exactement, my friend. I was shaking your hands, remember, when the drunkard distracted you, allowing me to plant cards in your pockets.”
“And my card, on the scales of Justice?”
“Your one,” she admitted, “I had to stow in advance of proceedings.”
The judge simply could not believe it. “You are telling us that the card had sat evident before us all the time, unnoticed?”
“Why would you spot it?” Molly laughed. “The mind will contrive to ignore anything, however incongruous, unless notice is drawn to it.”
The judge smiled. “Misdirection.”
Moll grinned. “Sir, you have garnered my exemplary meaning.”
Lawless and the Flowers of Sin Page 18