Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

by William Sutton

  Let us mourn, by all means. But let us not make jackasses of ourselves. The workforces of important exhibitors have been decimated by sick leave taken under the masquerade of national sorrow.

  FLUSHING OUT ILLS

  The Marlborough Works of the Thos. Crapper Co. have monopolised demand throughout London’s better boroughs for his fine apparatus. With a 250 gallon water tank on the roof, his works continuously test flushing mechanisms. For no extra charge his men install it with an airtight seal preventing the escape of noxious aromas. Detractors may deplore the apparatus’ discharge into culverts not intended for such abuses, but Mr Crapper’s is the sort of Great British invention to take the world by storm.

  Bear in mind, however, rumours that footpads and mountebanks are using Bazalgette’s sewers to access houses. Last year’s Skeleton Thefts, solved by Inspector Wardle, may have links with the new network. Lock up your water closets.

  THE ELEMENTS OF DESTRUCTION:

  A SERIES OF THREATS SENT BETWEEN 1859 AND 1862

  Oh, fat foul false friend,

  The time of judgement draws near.

  Guy Fawkes was a genius.

  Cromwell had the right idea.

  The writing is on the wall

  For the family blind in blood.

  Across the Styx go I, go I,

  Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.

  When you descend where you belong,

  I shall know in which circle to place you.

  Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

  The monster is slain in his tortuous lair,

  Despatched to the belly of hellfire.

  The common man throws off his shackles.

  Vive la république!

  The Monstrous Rotundity has had its day.

  AND STILL LONDON STANK

  Darkness fell rapidly in these times. The dusk crept in and seized hold of the smog. Together they extinguished the daylight at a glance. The lamplighters could barely keep pace.

  Individual woes were forgotten in an embarrassment of emotion, as London became a prison of overwrought mourners, exuding grief for the dead Prince. He may have been the finest king we never had, but the glowing eulogies, tears and wreaths left a sour taste in the mouth.

  I had my own sadness too. On Hogmanay I had word from the Clockmakers’ Guild, Edinburgh division, that my father had passed away on Christmas Eve. Typical of the old beggar to miss the feast. It was too late to get back for the funeral. His friends would mutter, but what could I do? It was the last in a long series of disappointments I caused him.

  I kept my own company that night. Walked myself ragged. From Primrose Hill, I looked down at the city huddling under its blanket of smog, as there drifted up to me the plaintive roar of the lions in the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens. I crossed Hampstead Heath, careless of robbers. I did not stop until the cheering lamps of the Spaniard’s Inn. There I drank a solitary toast to the old man and drowsed away the wee small hours in an old leather chair, as the carousing outside died away. Then I trudged homeward, down the hill and along the canal. At the sight of my frosty home, though, restlessness overtook me and I set off down towards the river.

  And still London stank. On that brisk winter morning, the drains were frozen over with filth. Nightsoil sellers still flouted the regulations. Poor Josiah Bent. If Wardle could shamelessly pin our thefts on innocents, why should I have believed the prison warden’s word over Josiah’s? Where were his wife and children now, I wondered? I heard of a family given shelter against the bitter cold by a kindly landlady of Clerkenwell. Each night she locked them in the cellar, fearful of prying eyes, now we police were to enforce the regulations against cellar dwellings. One morning she discovered the whole family drowned in filth. The neighbouring cesspit wall had given way. Through the stout oak door nobody had heard their cries.

  Some other things smelt none too sweet. The freezing fog that crept up oppressively from the docks could not hide the stench of two million unhappy people. But what matter? Come the summer, remove to your house by sea, and you barely noticed. After all, the Empire has made us all rich. And there is no shame in that because nobody is really poor, leastways no one worth speaking of.

  As I neared the river, the streets were fuller than ever with Scots and Irish vagrants, come to look for those streets paved with gold. But the gold remained elusive, busy underwriting stocks, standing as insurance on houses, or against loans for ventures to the Southern Seas. The Bank of England’s notes promised to pay the bearer on demand the stated sum, but it seemed folly to believe that the accounts would be squared at some great final reckoning.

  I walked along the Embankment, considering my future. What profit was there in chasing Berwick? My pursuit was less a series of revelations than a slow confusion. Likewise, though the skeleton thefts were quieted rather than solved, Wardle had no enthusiasm for pursuing the real culprits. Devoted as he was to Albert, I would not have expected him to go and admire the sea of flowers left at the Palace by the bereft public.

  I had seen his son just before Christmas. Wardle was out the day Charlie popped in to say goodbye. The cotton crisis had deepened. He could foresee no end to it.

  “I’m off to Australia, me. Sick of famine, strikes and riots.”

  It filled me with yearning, his talk of the vast prairies of Queensland. I envied him the chance of starting again. I envisaged great green bays and cavernous waterfalls beneath soaring mountains. Leery natives and monstrous vegetables, wild horses and implausible creatures loafing across vast plains.

  “One other thing now I’m off, though,” he said. “Couldn’t tell you before. Union regulations. There was a Skelton, you know, in the Reform League down here. Highly regarded. Great hopes held for him. Last I heard, he’d gone a bit strange. Lost patience with the movement. Taken his unit underground.”

  Yet Mr Wetherell’s words of encouragement stayed with me, when the Tooley Street enquiry proved fruitless and a high-ranking Inspector of the Yard retired to the South of France. Clearly someone was gaining; and if somebody was gaining, someone else must be losing; and it wasn’t the rich that were losing.

  Walking there by the Thames, as the city drew its breath for a doleful year, I felt for the first time a swell of pride in the terrible beauty that was London. The Guild’s letter mentioned certain business affairs of my father’s. If I chose not to interfere, they would deal with the business, and I might expect a small stipend. Or I could return to Edinburgh, escaping London’s feverish speculations. With father gone, I found myself considering a return. I could take over the workshop, live quietly there. Could I? Go back to the life I had long left behind me?

  WARDLE GETS THE CALL

  I knew something was wrong as soon as Wardle opened the letter.

  “What is it, sir?”

  He crumpled the letter tight in his hand. “He’s had another bloody threat.”

  “May I see it, sir?”

  “Just when you think you’re clear,” he said. “One prince is already dead from this foolishness. I won’t have it any more.”

  “Sir, the threat?”

  “You can see it when I have it,” he burst out. “There are things you don’t send by letter.”

  I nodded, unsatisfied. I was tired of not being taken into his confidence. “What about the first threat, sir, before the spout? Do you have that?”

  Narrowing his eyes, he pulled an envelope from a drawer and handed me a telegram. “See if you can make any sense of it.”

  “That’s all it is, sir?”

  “That’s all. That’s where the whole mess started.”

  I read it aloud in puzzled excitement. “‘Guy Fawkes was a genius.’”

  “Bloody pranksters weren’t.”

  “Why do you say that, sir?”

  “Don’t know their bloody history. Fifth of November, you’d expect from that, wouldn’t you? That’s what I expected. Spout went off on the eighth.”

  “Early on the ninth,” I c
orrected him. “I wonder. Why did he get it wrong?”

  “Quite simple. I kept Bertie out of town. They couldn’t get at them when they wanted.” For a moment Wardle looked satisfied, then his face darkened.

  I looked at him. “No other threats, sir? Before the Evans, for instance?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Seems strange. Why give warning of one and not the other?”

  “Why give warning at all?”

  “To make us puzzle. Make us try to understand.”

  “Taunt us, you mean.” He stepped absently over to the window and stood silent a few moments. “The boy sounds like he’s had a real scare. I just want it stopped. He’s dropped the tart. What more can we do?”

  “Maybe it’s gone beyond that now, sir. Or…” I frowned. “Are we quite sure that he has dropped her?”

  * * *

  “The gentlemen,” I said with curled lip, “will kindly remove themselves from the corridor.”

  I was stationed outside a room in the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Wardle had burst in and ejected several young men in cravats and blazers, smirking like schoolchildren. They passed me without acknowledgement, as if I were a manservant, conceiving the notion of skulking around to listen. I took pleasure in standing up to my full height, some inches above them all, and telling them to leave. They looked at me, unable to muster defiance, and melted impishly away. With their clatter gone, I could hear Wardle’s voice distinctly within.

  “I hope you’re satisfied now,” he was saying, shouting almost. “Now your father’s dead and buried.”

  The Prince—Bertie—replied in low tones.

  “But it is your fault, young man. I’ve watched you. I watch you cavorting around. Too long you’ve vexed your parents. Your father was already heartbroken, how you were carrying on with this trollop of an actress. Then he catches his death, telling you off.”

  Bertie asked a question.

  “I didn’t have to tell him. The whole of London knows. An actress! No wonder she goes round bragging she’s bedded a prince of the realm.”

  “Old chap,” Bertie raised his voice for the first time. “I simply won’t have her spoke of in that way. She’s a sweet girl and—”

  “She’s an actress. That’s an end of it.”

  “Look, old man, I know I’ve been foolish, but I’m… I was so terribly fond of her.”

  Here Wardle adopted a softer tone. “Look, son, you’ve done no different from these army officer types, I know—college saps with lax morals and full wallets. But you are the heir to the throne of England. The British Empire. It has to stop.”

  Bertie remained silent a moment.

  “Like your father said. The only hope for you is marriage to this Danish filly and early marriage at that.”

  “Inspector, old chap,” he said dolefully, “you’ve been a real brick through this whole business. But let’s not do anything hasty. Some days, I tell you, I wonder if I’ll go mad with it all, the way mother is mad—”

  “Enough of that.”

  “Over dear Papa, I mean.”

  “This new threat,” Wardle interrupted. “Let’s see it. Hmm. Monster is slain… Belly of hellfire…”

  “Unnerving, ain’t it, old man?”

  “So much bloody mumbo-jumbo. What I want to know is why now, out of the blue? It’s years since that last nonsense.”

  “Not so long, I think,” Bertie said apologetically.

  “Since the business at Euston? Two years, boy.”

  “There may have been one or two other incidents.” Bertie coughed.

  Now it was Wardle’s turn to speak so low that I could not hear.

  “That’s right, threats too,” Bertie went on uneasily. “Forgot to pass them on. Slipped my mind, you see.”

  “How many?”

  “One or two. You know.”

  “How many?”

  “Every few months since the Euston thingy, and the one before even.”

  “What do you mean, the one before?”

  “When I was inspecting Bazalgette’s embankment, you know. Then the Haymarket, the Evans and the rest. It’s uncanny. They seem to know where I’m going before I do.”

  A butler came towards me down the corridor. As Wardle was shouting, it seemed best to cover their voices by humming an air. After the man passed, without a look askance, Bertie was speaking urgently, marshalling the emotion in his voice.

  “You were all so incensed about it. I could perfectly well understand, but it seemed so dashed unfair. She’s a darling of a girl. What kind of a world is it where a chap who likes a girl isn’t allowed to see her? So I couldn’t pass on the threats, because I was afraid it showed that someone knew I was seeing her, when I’d promised everyone, not least father and your good self, that I would stop.”

  There was silence for a moment, then Wardle spoke with a terrible withering tone. “Have you stopped now? Have you? Now that your father is dead of it?”

  There was no reply.

  “Don’t give me that quivering lip.” The door flew open, and Wardle burst out, muttering. “Bloody fool.” As the door slammed shut behind him, I caught an image of the chubby Prince, face buried in his hands, sobbing.

  * * *

  “Where is he?” Wardle barked suddenly, as we reached Green Park.

  “Who, sir?” I suppose I knew very well what he meant. But it pained me to think that, on top of the uncertainties around us, Wardle and I should still be mincing words.

  “Bloody Skelton. That’s the man, isn’t it?”

  “Why, sir?” I was sick of all the pretence, the half-truths, and I’d be damned if I told him what I knew until he took me into his confidence. “What’s happened?”

  He breathed out through clenched teeth. “Bloody fool of a boy. I’ve lost one royal and I don’t intend to lose another. Where is he?”

  “I was hoping you might know, sir.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “I was under the impression that you were three steps ahead of me all the way. That you’d spoken to everyone I was looking for.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t look so offended, son. I’m just trying to protect the idiot Prince. Have you found no more trace of him in your poking around?”

  I hesitated. “Traces everywhere, but all leading nowhere. He’s truly gone to ground, sir. Could be in Clerkenwell or the Cape.”

  He snorted. “Is he in heaven or is he in hell?”

  “I don’t think the heavy-handed approach will work.”

  “We’ll just have to smoke him out.”

  “I think Nellie will know. If I could only find her.”

  Wardle made no reply. Instead he absently handed over a scrap of paper.

  “‘The monster is slain in his tortuous lair’,” I read aloud.

  I stared at it, fascinated, studying the impersonal print for hints of the handwriting I had seen in the finely bound tome at Madame Skelton’s.

  “Bloody fool of a boy now tells me there’s been something every few months. The madman’s been tracking his every move. Why play games? If he wants to do something, he should come out and do it.”

  “Sir, I should like to see all these threats.”

  “Why?” he said grimly.

  I was about to mention Miss Villiers and her notion of codes and hidden messages, but I mustn’t admit divulging secrets to the uninitiated. “He wants us to understand.”

  “He wants us afraid.”

  “Maybe so, but he has a plan, and if we’re to understand it, I’ll need to see all the threats. I’d also like to hear Bertie’s version of what happened following each threat.”

  “I’ll get you the details.”

  “May I not speak to the Prince?”

  “I said, I’ll get the details.”

  I looked away in annoyance. Of course, Wardle’s sense of hierarchy would preclude a sergeant speaking with a prince. “Does he not understand what’s happening?”

  We were approaching the Yard and he looked about him befo
re he spoke. “He doesn’t know it’s about Nellie.”

  “Hasn’t he noticed how the things happen when he’s with her?”

  Wardle sighed. “Look, he’s a contrary fool. I was afraid it would make him more pig-headed. I led him to believe it was anti-royalist protest. You know, having a go at the debauched Saxe-Coburgs. I thought it might curb his other vices and all.”

  As we walked into the Yard, Darlington was waiting for us in the hallway. “Inspector? Thank goodness. You’re wanted in Chelsea.”

  “I’m busy,” he barked. “It can wait, can’t it?”

  Darlington gave a deferential cough. “Sounds like a new skeleton theft.”

  Wardle put his head in his hands.

  PANIC IN THE STREETS

  That afternoon, Wardle handed me the envelope of threats. I was afraid to use the Worms to contact Miss Villiers, lest Wardle hear of it and ask about her. So I stopped in at the library myself and waited at our tea room.

  “Ah, Detective Fever,” said Miss Villiers, buzzing in like an electric storm. “On the rampage again?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Somebody ought to put a stop to me.”

  “If it’s not one disease it’s another.”

  I was surprised how pleased I was to see her. Books spilled from the satchel she hefted onto the table. “Studying hard, I see.”

  She laughed hollowly. “I’m so busy hunting down your man’s reading habits, I’ve no time for my own studies. What’s wrong? Don’t you have books in the provinces?”

  “We have our own national library, thank you very much, quite the equal of yours, in Edinburgh.”

  Her eyes softened. “Edinburgh? Is it pretty there?”

  “Pretty? It’s beautiful.” I surprised myself with this outburst. I had never thought myself capable of feeling homesick. I coughed. “Are you allowed to take out so many books?”

  “Ah. I was forced to borrow Aunt Lexy’s card. She wouldn’t mind, if she knew.”