Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

by William Sutton

  He breathed out. “I thought you might be referring to rumours about the Queen.” He looked around to check that nobody was near us and began in a tone of earnest pleading. “You’ll have heard of the Koháry curse. No? Well, well. The Coburgs, you see, have an eye for advantageous nuptials. But they’re suffering for it. Our beloved Prince Albert made the most brilliant marriage; he was penniless when he crossed the Channel. But his Uncle Ferdinand scored almost as high, winning the Hungarian heiress, Antoinette Koháry, whose father was so delighted with the match he bequeathed her his entire estate. What luck! Except that one cousin, a monk no less, was aggrieved at being precipitously disinherited. So he takes his manual of exorcisms to the churchyard at midnight. Oh, verily shall the Lord Almighty visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons, intones this old monk, to the third and fourth generation. You see? The blood curse of the Coburgs!”

  I looked back and forth in impatience, up and down the river. The tide was high and the reflections of the bridges, shimmering upon the turbid waters, seemed phantasmal links to another world. “Spare us the mumbo-jumbo, Jackman.”

  “Superstitious it may sound, but the Coburgs have been afflicted ever since by melancholic illness. Have you not read how Prince Albert’s cousins are falling like flies? It’s disastrous, this conjunction of royal bloodlines. It begets incurable maladies.” Jackman leaned closer to me. “The Hanovers, they’re notorious for brutality. Victoria’s father was drummed out of the army for flogging men hundreds of times over. Her uncle Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was suspected of murder, and incest. Of George III and his lunacy, the tales untold are countless. Now it’s the turn of the Prince of Wales.”

  I could brook this nonsense no longer. I turned back towards the Yard.

  Jackman dogged my footsteps. “Bertie is a charming enough young man, but he has a cruel streak. The stories in the clubs—”

  “Enough of the tall tales,” I retorted. “What happened to Mary Ann Brough?”

  “Victoria’s brood took their toll. She was dismissed. Heartbroken. Penniless. It is my belief, when she saw in her own children one iota of the cruelty she received at the hands of Victoria’s eldest son, she decided she could not bring such monsters into the world.”

  “Enough of this, Jackman. What is it you want to tell me?”

  He looked at me, hesitating. “He’s not a bad man, don’t get me wrong. Only there are decisions a man makes, early in life, that mark him, that alter his direction, so that when he has lived for many years with the consequences of that decision, he looks back upon a chain of actions he has taken that would have been anathema to his younger self.”

  “You are speaking of your own career?”

  “I am speaking of the inspector’s.”

  I looked at him and smelt only his bitterness. He had hinted that he had been unfairly sacked. It might be true.

  “I want to warn you. There are things that go on in the force. You’re young. An upstanding chap. You think you’re above all that. Don’t be too sure. You could lose everything, just like I have.”

  His look troubled me. I shook his fishlike hand and returned to work, trying to put from my mind that wheedling tone, that pleading gaze. Wardle had gone out. But I recalled his reaction when I first complained about the spout report, and I wondered if in every career the compromises and half-truths began so swiftly as they had in mine.

  * * *

  It took all Saturday and a series of exorbitant cab-rides to find her, but I tracked Hester down in a shabby Hoxton dance hall far from the West End. She seemed pleased to see me and lost no time excusing herself from a desultory rehearsal.

  “Gone down-market?” I asked as we sat down in the tea shop opposite.

  “Got to take the work that’s going.” She pouted. “My glamour days is over.”

  I smiled. “Surely not.”

  “Oh yes. Someone’s got it in for me.”

  It took me a moment to realise she was in earnest. “What happened?”

  “Another bleeding spout, wasn’t it?”

  “At the Evans?” I said breathlessly. “I didn’t hear of it.”

  She shrugged. “Toffs and royalty are never too keen on seeing their mistresses’ names plastered all over the press.”

  “But how has that affected you?”

  “They decided I was the Jonah, didn’t they, and sent me packing.”

  I leaned forward. “You know something, Hester.”

  “I know I’m no bleeding jinx,” she burst out, “and I can tell you her name, if you like. Starts with an N and ends in Hell.”

  “Was Nellie in the show?”

  “She was in the bleeding box. Safety curtain comes down at the interval and sends bloody Niagara Falls on her and her fancy man. Only I’m the one as gets the blame for it, while her with her friends in high places waltzes off free as a lark. Buy us a bun, won’t you, love?”

  I smiled, sad to see her disappointed. Yet there I sat, calculating for my own ends how to lead her into indiscretions. I told myself it was from admirable motives, the type of game Wardle would play without qualms, but it turned my stomach. Still, a mug of chocolate and a cream bun, and it all poured out, without my prompting.

  “You could see the shillings in her eyes,” she said. “All doe-eyed she’d been over Berwick while they were courting. She loved being admired, and he admired her like no other man could. He was clever, you see, and funny, which flattered her the more. They were a handsome couple, it’s true. Him with his hat and sideburns, cracking some hare-brained joke; her with her waist and her bust, and that hair of hers, flailing it round like a fire torch, and putting on elegant airs. But I tell you, for all she was full of it, of how clever he was and how fascinating he talked, she couldn’t bear playing second fiddle to him. All her life she’s been centre of attention. Since the day she was born! They picked her up and clucked over her chubby cheeks and that flaming hair. But at those posh parties, it wasn’t enough and she felt like a fool. Finding herself in a circle where words counts as much as looks, and where her filthy tongue wouldn’t do, it came as a shock to her.”

  The posh parties she spoke of were, of course, soirées chez Dickens. The professional actresses of whom Miss Dickens had spoken were Nellie and Hester. She had a soft spot for the novelist himself. “Stickler for details is Mr Dickens. None too keen on the, shall we say, improvisational style I’m used to. But he’s always ready for a laugh and a jape after hours. We had grand times. Played to gentlemen and ladies all over. I met the Queen, you know.”

  “And Berwick?”

  “He came along to start, but he had his meetings and that.”

  “Meetings?”

  “You know, all that protest nonsense.”

  “What nonsense?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “Reform? Some kind of secret society?”

  “You’re talking to the wrong girl, love.”

  “Then tell me where Nellie is and I’ll ask her.”

  She looked at me reproachfully. I was about to push the point, but something told me that Hester didn’t know, or care. “Can you tell me about Nellie’s fancy man?”

  “Is it that still? Well, young actresses tend to draw a lot of attention from gentlemen. At the cocktail parties, we received an embarrassment of invitations, not all of them above board. I often wonder if that was why Mr Dickens stopped re-engaging us: he wasn’t confident of our morality.” She raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough. We weren’t too sure of our morality and all. Some of these gentlemen, I couldn’t tell you the things they’re after.”

  “Hester, don’t tell me you are blushing.” I had imagined the world held nothing secret or shameful for her likes, but nonetheless she blushed. Still, I had no need to hear of the indelicacies and indecencies that gentlemen demanded. “Tell me about the spout at Euston Square.”

  A smile played across her lips. “You know already.”

  “It was Berwick, wasn’t it? Ho there! Another bun for the lady.”
r />   She giggled. “All right, I admit it. I tipped him the wink about the time.”

  She still seemed to think I knew more than I did. “How? When?”

  “There was me and Nellie and Roxton and—” She bit into the second bun. “You know who.”

  “Nellie’s fancy man. The one she met after The Frozen Deep.”

  “That’s right. Up at Roxy’s place in the country we were. What a mansion! All the frills and trimmings. Though Nellie reckons it’s all for show, he hasn’t two shillings to his name, and the whole place is put under dust covers the moment we leave. The way he goes on, gambling and drinking and showing off and worse, I thought he had a goldmine up his derrière. Anywise, Berwick was distraught about Nellie. He wouldn’t believe it at first. Then off he went and hid like a mouse. Half-starved himself.”

  A strange envy took me. “He sounds a curious fellow, Hester.”

  “Berwick?” She looked at me quizzically. “He’s all right of a chap,” she laughed, as if to describe the Koh-i-Noor as a nice little diamond. “Says what he means, which is more than can be said for most people. Thinks the best of everyone.”

  “Of everyone?”

  “Everyone who deserves it. There’s a few fools he won’t suffer. I always liked Berwick. He’s what I call a gent, not like some of ’em that are said to be born into it. Always a kind word he has. Makes you feel like you’re worth a thousand guineas. Tell you what else: he has big ideas. Yet she dropped him like so much dirt.”

  “So you helped him?”

  “He was cooking up a scheme to cheer himself up. I told him when we were coming up to town and he set up a welcoming party. I was expecting fireworks, or maybe a brass band.”

  “To embarrass them?”

  “For a laugh,” she said.

  “Because Nellie had left him and Coxhill had orchestrated it?”

  “For a laugh,” she insisted, voice cracking with amusement. Hester cared nothing for industrial sabotage or syndicated espionage, or any of the tangled plots I had conjured up. “Roxy so full of himself, and Nellie turned all hoity-toity like, they needed the wind taken out of their sails. Roxy loved working out secretive times we could arrive so as nobody’d see us. What a hoot, says they, to take the late train. Why not, says us girls, expecting we’ll head for their club and make a night of it.”

  “So how did Berwick find out?”

  “I nipped out and sent him a wire.” She smiled a naughty little smile. “You should have seen their faces when the waterworks started up in their faces. Serve ’em right.”

  I nodded, picturing the scene. Coxhill struts from the train, showing off to his fancy friends how his machine is putting the crowning glory to the greatest station in Christendom. Alongside him, Nellie with her new fellow. Skelton, tucked in some corner of the square, watches—glumly or exultantly?—as said machine pops its cork all over them. “Why the body?”

  “Body?”

  “I mean… What I meant was the body of the clock. Why would Berwick steal a clock’s workings?”

  She shrugged. “Nellie had a lovely watch he made her. Engraved and all. She used to wear it pinned to a bow on her bosom. Until she got a gold one off her new fellow.”

  This betrayal I somehow found the most objectionable. Besides that, Hester was the first person who had let me in on the game. While everyone else held their tongue or wove me fairytales, she delighted in telling it all, irrepressibly drawn to share the fun of it.

  Her brow darkened. “It’s not right, forgetting your old bestest mate, is it now? With her high-falutin’ friends, living the high-life in their posh frocks and flash carriages.”

  “So bitter, Hester?” I smiled. “Did Coxhill not treat you well?”

  She made a face. “My own fault. I had shillings in my eyes and all. Horrible little man he is, in every department.” She chuckled to herself. “Not that it’s got me anywhere, except bleedin’ Hoxton Hall. Chucked out of my lodgings too. What was the need for that, I ask you? We’re like puppets. They pull a string and up we jump; they pull another and the curtain falls forever.”

  “Hardly forever, Hester. You’re not finished yet.”

  She smiled. A valiant smile, yet it made me feel glum. “Nellie don’t look so clever now, either, eh? All sorts of promises he made her. We’ll see if he makes them good.”

  The first time I spoke to her, I had actually assumed it was none of my business who had stolen Berwick’s girl. It seemed unnecessary. Ungentlemanly. Now I realised what a poor detective I was.

  Hester sat looking at me with appeal in her eyes. That was what she wanted from me. To rescue her. She had been dropped from a great height, all the way from the West End to the East, and she thought I could break her fall.

  “Put in a kind word for me, will you?” She drank down her tea. “And look after yourself. You’re thin as a rake.”

  “I’ve been under the weather.”

  “You’ve been underfed, poor boy. You should get someone in to feed you up.”

  I laughed. “You overestimate a sergeant’s wage.”

  “I didn’t mean a maid,” she said, a little crestfallen. She took out her purse to square up. “I’d best be off.”

  “Hester,” I said, putting my hand on hers. She withdrew it and rose from the table, as I drew out my own money to pay. Foolish me, I almost let her go and I hadn’t got my answer. “Who is Nellie’s new fancy man?”

  “Away with you,” she laughed. Seeing I was in earnest she burst out, “Don’t play your games with me. You know who. You’ve been sent to catch me out, so’s they have an excuse to stamp me further into the mud.”

  “Hester, Hester, I’m not playing a game.”

  “They told me not to tell. You know they did.”

  “Who told you?”

  “You know very well. Them as knows.” She headed for the street.

  I followed. “Did Coxhill tell you to keep quiet?”

  She gave a hollow little laugh. “He didn’t need to, though that Hunt made some less than friendly suggestions. But it’s your man I’m scared of.”

  I grabbed her arm roughly. Too roughly, but I had to know. “Hester, you must tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “That bloody inspector, wasn’t it?” she cried in exasperation.

  I stood in the middle of the road. “Which inspector?”

  “Little bloke in the long coat.”

  I let go her arm, feeling the world around me spin. “Wardle?” I said in a whisper.

  “Himself. Keep your mouth shut good and proper, he said and he promised that would make it all right. More of a threat than a promise, I s’pose. Must dash now, love. I’ll be late for curtain up.” She pecked me on the cheek and was gone.

  “Fancy seeing you here, Sergeant.”

  I turned in dismay to see the shrewish little reporter from the Bugle, rolling up with a hoofer on his arm. “Scholes. What are you doing here?”

  “Theatre review, my friend.” He grinned at the girl. “Like a spot of culture, me. Coming along?”

  “Not tonight,” I said.

  “Don’t you like a bit of music?”

  “Oh yes,” I said, turning for home, “but I’ve no stomach for it tonight.”

  A PRINCE AMONGST MEN

  “I have news,” said Miss Villiers, leaning forward to pour me a cup of tea. “You have been too busy, it seems, with visits to actresses, to grace us with your presence in the library.”

  “Miss Villiers, I was injured,” I exclaimed. “Besides, Hester has furnished priceless information.”

  “Not to mention famous novelists and their daughters.”

  “Ruth!”

  “Mr Collins uses the library, you know. He was most pleased when I was able to show him to the particulars of the Road Hill House murder so promptly. Detective fever, I explained to him. Detective fever? says he. Wonderful phrase. I shall steal it for my next novel, if I may.”

  It seemed too long a time since our last tea room meeting, and I
smiled as I sliced the cake. I had told her of my discoveries, and my injury. The story of my return to the Rose and Crown enthralled her particularly.

  She, in her turn, had been no sluggard. First she had popped along to Red Lion Square, where the Reform League’s central office was attached to the working men’s club.

  “I was politely informed by a well-meaning old duffer called Kenelm Digby that the League was an association of diverse organisations with convergent interests. As such, they had no record of the millions of citizens who had attended meetings or contacted them. Even if they had such a record, he doubted whether he should make it available to any old Tom, Dick or Harry. That is, without being openly rude, he sent me packing. You would need a warrant, I think, to persuade him that your intentions were bona fide.”

  I shook my head. Wardle had told me to end an investigation that he regarded as a personal tomfoolery and a waste of police time. “I could never request such a warrant. Not as things stand.”

  “Another door closed,” she sighed. “But I have pursued a second line of enquiry. The British Museum is not the only institution of learning in the world. Our man, I reasoned, might have turned elsewhere to leaven his reading diet of politics and persecutions. Fearing to be a nuisance to you, I took it upon myself to make discreet inquiries. At the London Library, nothing. Clerkenwell, Camden and Finsbury, nothing.”

  “But?” I said impatiently.

  “But I am pleased to report my intuition proven correct. Our man joined Mudie’s Lending Library in 1855, before it removed from Red Lion Square to New Oxford Street, recommended by a certain Mr Digby. Besides novels, he liked poetry. Apocalyptic stuff. You know the sort, Shelley and Blake, Christopher Smart, John Skelton, right back to Dante.”

  “John Skelton? That was his father’s name.”

  “John Skelton was Poet Laureate, but to Henry VIII. Not much use to us. By late last year, after we started looking for him, a new direction in his reading emerges. History, or rather drama and novels based on history. The Bastille, Cromwell, Guy Fawkes. Hamlet, Julius Caesar, the rape of Lucretia. Biblical tales, like Samson, David and Goliath. Now, several of his books had faint pencil annotations. Scribbles, they seemed like, and at first I thought them simply illegible. But I wonder if it might be code.”