Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

by William Sutton

  “Blow up the Houses of Parliament?”

  He grimaced. “Leave treason and plots to the history books. You can pass your days sweating if you like, imagining all sorts of fearful crimes. That’s not our work, though. There’s nowt to be done till there’s something needs done. Keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground, son, but get some sleep. You look ruined.”

  He bought me a platform ticket and himself a ticket home to Windsor. I wondered if I should suggest that we share a pitcher of ale in the station saloon bar. But his patience had worn thin and I was loath to aggravate him further.

  We stood waiting for his train. “How long is it,” he said, “that you’ve been in the police?”

  “A year, sir, all but.”

  “Give it one year more and your imagination will stop running away with you. Too many bloody thrupenny novels, that’s what I reckon. Though I’ll confess,” he said, his tone softening on a sudden, “there was a paper I liked as a lad. The Terrific Register, it were called. We’d each put in a penny, buy one copy between us. Most outlandish stories. I’ll never forget them. Folks buried alive; trapped in tunnels; rivers of fire under the earth. Pure fiction, of course, though it were dressed up as fact. Good, if you get a thrill from that sort of thing, like all lads do. Do you think they keep that in the British Museum Library?”

  “They say,” I smiled, “they have everything ever published.”

  “Do they really? That’s what our taxes pay for, is it?” He sniffed and looked on down the line. “How old are you, son, twenty-three, twenty-four? Your day’ll come soon enough. I had a big success round that age. There was six children, all their throats slit, and their mother, a wet nurse, hurt too. Mary Ann Brough was her name. The papers were shocked. Everybody clamouring for justice to be done. I took the time to talk to the woman. Nobody’d thought to do it. She told me plain enough. Killed them herself.”

  “Killed her own children, sir?”

  “Six of them. Told me why she did it. Couldn’t get any peace. She were shattered and they wouldn’t give her no rest. Nobody believed it at first, but she confessed it, clear and simple, come the trial.” His train rolled up to the buffers beside us. “Since then my star’s been in the ascendant. There’s no hurry, see, not for a bright lad like you. Bide your time. Put in the hours. Don’t throw good time after bad. You’ll learn soon enough. It’s not like the papers.”

  As the train pulled out, I turned away, surprised to find myself dejected and tired. I walked off to find a bus home. Passing the cheap hotels of Paddington, with their cargo of cheap women, I felt all of a sudden lonely. In the dim lamplight, I pulled out the book Miss Villiers had lent me: Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Wardle was right. I mustn’t let my fancy run away with me. He had checked things. He knew what he was doing. He had better connections than I ever would. If there was a conspiracy or a cover-up, he would have found it. The case was closed, and he was right: I ought to drop it.

  MESSAGE FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM LIBRARY,

  DELIVERED TO THE YARD BY THE PROFESSOR:

  FOR THE ATTENTION OF SERGEANT LAWLESS OF SCOTLAND YARD

  Dear Sergeant Lawless,

  Found it, after countless hours fiddle-faddling through filing cards. A catholic taste in books the chap has too. Of course, I do not even know what he has done. I hope I am not consigning the poor fellow to the gallows.

  I trust that no Caledonian custom of illiteracy shall be allowed to grip your soul and you will deign to grace our sturdy desks with your formidable shadow once again. That is, if I cannot prevail upon you to invite me to the Singing Mouse.

  Good luck and God speed. Do, please, let me know what transpires, if you pity a poor librarian her interest in affairs none of her business.

  Yours,

  Miss Ruth Villiers

  POST SCRIPTUM

  Will I receive a reward? Or do you keep that for yourself?

  POST POST SCRIPTUM

  Have I have quite forgot myself? Forgive me. This little ginger mop who styles himself the Professor is in rather a hurry. Before you are quite burnt up by curiosity and impatience, I will tell all.

  His address is 42 Red Lion Street, which I believe to be by the Victoria Road in Clerkenwell. His name is Berwick Skelton.

  THE THIRD PERIOD

  (EARLY 1861)

  THE BUGLE—COMEDY ROUTINE & POPULAR SONG PASSAGES MARKED IN PERIODICALS—THE SKELETON THEFTS THE ROSE & CROWN—A NOTE FROM THE LIBRARY—LORD’S THE FAMILY MARX—THE HAYMARKET HOOFER THE ELOCUTION TEACHER

  EUSTON EVENING BUGLE

  20th April, 1861

  WHAT A RIOT

  The height of fashion this spring is not fine French clothes, nor a fully accoutred carriage. The clamour is neither for railway shares nor the debut ball of yet another European princess. Infidelity with an actress is passé; royal parties a bore; likewise throwing down the gauntlet to popular novelists in the Garrick Club. This season, to become the talk of the town, one simply must be burgled.

  Is it the old highwayman fever, society swooning over some latter-day Dick Turpin? Not so. Today’s thieves have abandoned the old melodrama in favour of a terribly modern mysteriousness. They enter in the dead of night, armed with a single bone to pacify the dog, and make off with the household’s most elegant item—a footstool here, a decanter there—leaving the police baffled. No doors have been forced, nor windows broken; nobody hurt; nobody seen. The city’s finest houses are on tenterhooks. Hostesses faint; lords offer rewards; youngsters miss school from staying up late to catch them red-handed.

  Bravo to the chivalrous culprits. You have set society aflame.

  In this topsy-turvy modern world, not only do the rich pray to be robbed, but convicts disdain their victuals. Prisoners in the Cold Bath Fields House of Correction caused panic yesterday when, in protest at their provender, they rioted. The Bugle secured an interview with one inmate. “The slop is filthy,” declared Josiah Bent, “and the portions minuscule.” The Bugle refrained from suggesting that, if Josiah wished to be the master of his mealtimes, he had better have stayed outside the walls of such an institution.

  The warden of the prison remained sanguine. “Our inmates are perfectly well provisioned. Trumped-up ideas those Reformists inculcate into the lower classes, making people ungrateful for the mercies shown them. Well-meaning amateurs they are, deluding the poor with expectations of grandeur, and lamentably, for it leads only to dissatisfaction. They should acknowledge such nonsense for the tripe it is and keep their mouths shut.”

  COMEDY ROUTINE & POPULAR SONG PERFORMED BY THE GREAT MACKAY AT EVANS MUSIC HALL, COVENT GARDEN:

  (Enter Great Mackay dressed as a toff. Upstage, weeping, sits Little Mackay, mostly undressed, as the lady of the house.)

  GREAT MACKAY: Ladles and jellybubbles, good eventide and God bless ye. What pleasure it is to receive ye—

  LITTLE MACKAY: Boo-hoo-hoo.

  GREAT MACKAY: Cough, cough. As I was saying, to receive ye at—

  LITTLE MACKAY: Boo-hoo-hoo.

  GREAT MACKAY: For the love of God, Mrs Mackay, what have you got your bloomers in a twist about tonight?

  LITTLE MACKAY: Oh, Mr Mackay.

  GREAT MACKAY: What is it, my petal? What ails my sweet?

  LITTLE MACKAY: I’m so ashamed.

  GREAT MACKAY: (to audience) Do you perceive her meaning? I don’t!

  LITTLE MACKAY: (weeps and hides her face)

  GREAT MACKAY: What should I do, sirs and madams?

  VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Give her some nice flowers, Mr Mackay!

  GREAT MACKAY: Good idea. My darling!

  (He produces from under his hat a bunch of cloth begonias. She bursts out crying. Great Mackay stuffs them back into his hat.)

  GREAT MACKAY: Look what you done, clever clogs.

  2nd AUDIENCE VOICE: She wants pearls, Mackay!

  GREAT MACKAY: Good idea. My darling!

  (He pulls from her bosom an enormous string of oyster shells and presents them to her. Little Mackay
redoubles her weeping.)

  3rd AUDIENCE VOICE: Give her a Crapper!

  GREAT MACKAY: Good idea. (From the flies descends a picture of a Water Closet.) A certain flush with every pull, my darling! (sound effect) Airtight seal to prevent noxious aromas, and gas receptacle for combustible ends.

  (Little Mackay walks melodramatically downstage and looks up to the gods. Mackay follows. Upstage appears a shadowy figure.)

  LITTLE MACKAY: I have flowers in the garden. I have pearls coming out of my ears. I have chamber pots wherever I turn. But, my darling, everybody I know has been—(she holds back the tears)

  GREAT MACKAY: To Brighton?

  LITTLE MACKAY: No. Everybody but us has been—

  GREAT MACKAY: To the Queen’s garden party?

  LITTLE MACKAY: No! (wails)

  GREAT MACKAY: My darling, what can it be?

  (As he steps forward to comfort her, the shadowy figure creeps centre stage. We now see it is a skeleton figure. It picks up the pearls.)

  LITTLE MACKAY: Everybody but us has been robbed!

  (Skeleton figure whips the hat off Great Mackay’s head. Makes a run for it, banging his leg against the chair. He hops off.)

  GREAT MACKAY: Lor’ lummy, what was that?

  (He runs back centre-stage and picks up the skeleton’s shin bone.)

  LITTLE MACKAY: Oh, my darling, you do love me after all!

  (She shows the bone to the audience, and swoons away. Enter hoofers. Music and skeleton tap dance.)

  GREAT MACKAY: (sings)

  Who’s that slipping through the fence

  When the gardener’s asleep?

  Who’s that lifting your sixpence

  When you are counting sheep?

  It could be highwaymen,

  It could be a monkey.

  It could be a bywayman.

  Could be a flunky.

  They’ll speedily remove from your stately old home

  Your most stylish possession, leaving just that old bone.

  With all their stealthy coming and going,

  It’s a fabulous Skeleton Theft.

  Oh, let me tell you,

  It’s that scandalous Skeleton Theft.

  You’ve been the victim of the

  Fabulous… Skeleton Theft.

  Oh yes.

  PASSAGES MARKED IN PERIODICALS BY READER 1381,

  BRITISH MUSEUM LIBRARY:

  “The proletarian question is the one that will cause a terrible explosion in present day society if society and governments fail to fathom and resolve it.”

  ALPHONSE LAMARTINE, poet and leading figure in Paris Commune of 1848

  “Monopoly and the hideous accumulation of capital in a few hands… carry in their own enormity the seeds of cure… Every large workshop and manufactory is a sort of political society, which no act of parliament can silence and no magistrate disperse.”

  JOHN THELWELL, The Rights of Nature, 1796

  “It is true that labour produces wonderful things for the rich—but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces—but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty—but for the worker, deformity… It produces intelligence—but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.”

  KARL MARX, Manuscripts, 1844

  “Let it come twice again, severely—the people advancing all the while in the knowledge that, humanly speaking, it is, like Typhus Fever in the mass, a preventable disease—and you will see such a shake in this country as was never seen on Earth since Samson pulled the Temple down upon his head.”

  CHARLES DICKENS, writing about cholera, Household Words, 1854

  THE SKELETON THEFTS

  Wardle turned away from the gaggle of newsmen outside Sir Joseph Paxton’s house and climbed into the cab where I sat shivering.

  “Bloody papers these days,” he growled. “Barely asked about the crime. Full of nonsense about this blasted fever sweeping the country again.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “Cholera, sir?”

  “Election fever, so they call it.” He cast a withering glance behind us, as our driver headed off, weaving between the newsmen and the roadworks lining the Bayswater Road. “What business have they, asking me who I might vote for?”

  I breathed out with relief. “People value your view, sir. As a pillar of society.”

  He snorted. This was the third theft now, all of a piece, which suggested that we had it wrong at Pearson’s, and Wardle was irritated. Worse, the press were banging on the door when we had barely begun our investigations, as if someone in the household had tipped them off.

  “Waste of time and money, elections,” he grumbled. “New issues every time, and they never address any real problems. If you ask me, they should have done with them chattering politicians. Like dancing bears, they are. Choose a proper king.”

  “Sir!”

  “Oh yes, I’m a royalist. I make no bones about it. We’ve had a few duff ones, I’ll admit. Mad ones too. But this German is a prince among men and no mistake.” With that, he fell to staring out the window. The rest of the journey we sat in silence.

  * * *

  It was a new year. My excitement at joining the Yard wore off, as surely as the seasons turned. By the time the Professor brought Miss Villiers’ note—some weeks after my day in the library—I had given up on the spout. Wardle was right. The possibilities were infinite, the evidence negligible.

  Yet that name pulled me up short. Where had I heard it before? That night, in the hospital. From the matron, Bunny. “Good Mr Skelton,” she had said. An incontrovertible connection: the man who had brought Shuffler to hospital was a student of hydraulics.

  It did seem extraordinary. I had been chosen, however, not for extraordinary duties, but for mundane ones. Indeed, perhaps it was good for me, that knock-back from Wardle. I must determine to be a useful, obliging sergeant, like Darlington and the rest. I was enjoying increased wages, more regular hours. There was even time to slip into the theatre of an evening, if I had the inclination. Why risk Wardle’s wrath? Why throw my chance away?

  The Edgar Allan Poe book lay by my bedside like an unfulfilled promise. I read a couple of the tales, but found them fantastical. I felt I owed Miss Villiers an explanation, but somehow I kept putting it off. Before I knew it, Christmas had come and gone. I kicked myself for my ill manners. In January, I scribbled her a desultory card reiterating my lunch invitation, and asked Worm to deliver it; but I heard nothing back.

  * * *

  The next day, Wardle stomped in late and threw the papers on my desk. “Bloody newsmen, eh?”

  I read the headline in surprise. “Skeleton thefts?”

  “Sensationalism. Make the public restless with their jumped-up claptrap. A name for everything they have. Their Great Stink and their Road Hill House murder. Skeleton thefts, I ask you.”

  I skimmed through two or three quasi-fictional accounts of the theft at Paxton’s. Contrasted with rather jocular references to Wardle were weighty evaluations of Paxton himself. Designer of the Crystal Palace. Botanist, architect, engineer. Liberal MP, inventor and railway promoter. “I don’t understand, sir, why they make one little theft so important, just because he’s well known.”

  Wardle snorted. “He’s got his finger in a few pies. They all have, that railway lot. Remember Hudson? Owned half the papers. That’s how he had the clout to get the filthy things built. I’ll give you two-to-one on, Paxton’s got money in a couple of these rags.” He must have noticed my expression of shock. “How long have you lived here, Watchman? Have you not noticed how money talks? If they say it’s good, it’s because they’re selling it. If they say it’s bad, they haven’t got shares in it—yet. Simple as that.”

  I stared at the papers, as if they might turn into a pumpkin. “Sir, shouldn’t we warn Hudson to invest in guard dogs?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The thieves clearly have a partiality for railway developers.”

  Wardle gave the bark that served him for laughter. “Hudson lost
his pile in ’47. The week of terror, they called it. He’s still in exile for fraud, far as I know, despised and debt-ridden. Still, there’s something in what you say.”

  So Coxhill’s hero-worship was indeed misplaced.

  “Tell you what, Watchman.” Wardle put his hand to his brow. “Do some digging around. See where Paxton’s interests lie. And the others, why not? Not least which papers they back. Publishing nonsense like this! There’s times I’d like a little something to shake in their faces as a warning.”

  * * *

  I could think of no better place to look into Paxton’s holdings than the British Museum Library. I had forgotten, though, that my reader’s card was only valid for a month. They would not permit me to enter, nor renew my pass without a further recommendation from Wardle. I asked for Miss Villiers, thinking she might put in a special word for me. She was unavailable. I tried to write a note, but the appropriate words eluded me.

  I hurried away down Museum Street, gritting my teeth at the awkward prospect of asking Wardle again, when a voice called to me from a doorway.

  “Sergeant Lawless?” Out came Miss Villiers, wrapped in a long coat that would have suited the Tsarina. “It is you! I thought you’d vanished quite away. You’re rather overdue with that lunch you promised me.”

  She waved away my mumbled apologies with a disdainful gesture, taking hold of my sleeves and dragging me into the tea room.

  “I see.” She arched her brows. “You are in too much of a hurry to stop with me.”

  “I’m working,” I protested, laughing. “At least, I really can’t stop long.”

  “Well, don’t let me delay you, officer. I wouldn’t like to be guilty of keeping a detective from his work through some womanish fancy for tea and cakes.”

  I demurred, of course, explaining all at once how helpful she had been, how sorry I was, what an awkward situation I now had, and so on and so forth.

  Before I could object, she ordered a pot of tea and scones. Thus obliging me to stay at least a while, she gushed with questions like water from a Highland spring. “Have you found the chap? I’ve been watching like a hawk, but not a peep. I was worried that my indiscretion had led to his arrest. Of course, I’m jumping to conclusions, assuming he has committed a crime. Otherwise, why should you be looking for him? And why should he hide himself?”