Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

by William Sutton

  The Bugle can also reveal that “certain remains” dug up during works have been stolen from the company offices. Pearson declined to comment, but the Bugle has discovered that the remains include human bones. These relics date back centuries, but some are doubtless from more recent explosions of the Fleet sewer: recall the Poor House blast of 1846. Medical students purchasing cut-price skeletons should beware, lest, in saving a few pennies, they catch typhus from their own forefathers.

  Nonetheless, the Metropolitan’s trial run, at the end of May, impressed shareholders. Mr Gladstone, they tell us, though reluctant on entering the catacomb, seemed impressed by the 3¼ mile dash from Paddington to Farringdon.

  Yet the Bugle received contradictory reports, describing how “a shrieking, as of ten thousand drones, rises up beneath the thunder of the wheels. One has Tartarean visions of accidents, collisions, crumbling tunnels. A fierce wind takes away the breath. This, then, is the living instantiation of The Black Pit into which we are now plunging.”

  Tartarean indeed. Such is the folly we like to style Progress.

  CONCLUSION OF ARTICLE IN THE BEEHIVE, BY BERTON KELSWICK, PRINTS BY JOHN MARTIN, RA

  …Such are the degradations of Clerkenwell’s rookeries.

  Besides such shame, the East End is also renowned for its primordial sense of justice. “Doing the rights”, they call it there. This justice is exacted any weeknight outside the borough’s taverns whenever there is a promise broken, work unpaid, or profit made from another’s pain. In our land divided into two nations, what will prevent this vengeance from spreading beyond the borough’s bounds?

  When Noah built his ark in his back garden, hundreds of miles from the sea, his neighbours thought him deluded. Reasonably so, you might say—though your scepticism would have got you drowned. The Chartists’ petition of 1848 was a manifesto of delusions, we were told; ideas such as union rights and the universal franchise, we were told, are further from sense than Noah’s garden from the sea. Thus were we fobbed off with diluted reforms and promises of a new Jerusalem among these dark satanic mills.

  Beware! If the trusting common man, who toils unheeded to shore up the floodwaters, should open his eyes, he will lose patience. There will come such a quake as has not been felt since Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple. There will follow a deluge to wash the guilty from their palace of indolence. If the common man should also be sacrificed in this shake, at least he will die with his eyes fixed upon Noah’s great rainbow, but those responsible will end deep in the circles of the inferno, enduring for eternity the punishment to fit their crimes.

  There may be times to silence the deluded. There are also times to heed delusions, lest they turn out to be visions.

  CODE BREAKING

  Wardle came into the office white-faced. “Bloody Worms. Never get one when you want one, then they deliver nonsense like this. What do you make of it?”

  He planted the note from Simpson squarely in the middle of my desk:

  “Initial Analysis of Bones, requested by Sergeant Lawless. The specimens derive from many different bodies: age varied, both sexes, date and cause of death indiscernible at this remove. I can tell no more on such pitiful evidence, save that they are all human.”

  Wardle stood there, waiting for my explanation. All I could do was clench my teeth and screw up my eyes in frustration.

  My night-time encounter with Smiler had left me with several headaches. In my exhaustion, I could barely comprehend the ramifications. As the Exhibition got into full swing, I sat down to write the report of my operation. Only then did I realise quite how much I would be forced to conceal.

  I sent to Bazalgette, thanking him for his help, and mentioning in passing that his tosher had not appeared. I was taken aback to receive a frosty response. The fellow had been sent, all right, but he had never come back to work. His friends had all vanished into the aether with him. If I had not arrested the fellow, he could only assume that young Numpty had seen me from afar, panicked that their game had been rumbled, and taken his troop underground.

  Bloody Numpty.

  It was less than a year since Worm had saved my life, when the sewer fever took me. Besides Bazalgette’s valiant plea for clemency, I was damned if I would get Worm’s chums needlessly into hot water. After all, there had been no more thefts since my encounter with Smiler; they had got the message. Several men already languished in gaol for the crimes. Why bring down Wardle’s wrath on a hapless gang of urchins who, for all they had led us a merry dance, had stolen nothing more than pennies, curios and sprockets?

  Yet I now had it on Smiler’s authority that Skelton was involved. I was shocked to discover that the two cases were intertwined, and I badly needed Wardle’s help to make sense of it. But in my report for him, I determined to omit several details. I mentioned the second thief, the one who called out in backslang, but did not say that it was a child. Secondly, I did not record recognising Smiler, nor working out that he was the Tosher King, successor to his brother, Shuffler. For if I could unearth Numpty’s tosher credentials, so could Wardle.

  I did, however, want Wardle to realise that Skelton was somehow caught up in the business. So I stressed the importance of the stolen clock workings, declaring as resident expert that the extraction resembled the job on the Euston Square clock. Why it had been done I did not spell out, but I recalled Pat’s amusement in describing how that first hydraulic spout was set off by a clockwork mechanism.

  I also vowed to corner Worm as soon as possible.

  Busy with the Exhibition, Wardle had brushed off my report. He seemed annoyed that I had used my initiative in his absence, and this latest news from Simpson was the last straw.

  “What the hell is he on about?” he demanded. “Human bones? Are you telling me the thieves are mass murderers?”

  I read over Simpson’s letter in a panic. “He must be able to tell us more than that.”

  Wardle paced to the window, tight-lipped. “Could be grave-robbers.”

  “Resurrectionists,” I said absently. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Leaving bodies at the scene of crime. Like the spout. I told you it was linked, sir.”

  He looked round sharply. “You told me nothing of the sort. What else do you know? What about this outing in the sewers?”

  “I’ve been trying to find him, sir. He used to work for Bazalgette. But he’s vanished. I’ve tried every lead I can. Except…” I paused as he looked at me expectantly, enjoying for once the sense that I was one step ahead of him. “If we could find Nellie…”

  His brow darkened as I spoke the name, and I sensed it: he knew where she was. All this time I’d been seeking her, he’d known and kept it secret. “Leave the girl be.”

  “Sir, she could be the key—”

  “He’s sworn off her, I tell you. What does she matter?”

  I held up Simpson’s note. “We don’t know what he’s doing. He runs rings about us. He springs surprises all over town.”

  “You think he orchestrated the thefts?”

  “Perhaps. Just to show that he could. So we’d take him seriously when he threatened the Prince. You can’t shrug it off any more, sir.”

  “All right,” he barked. “I should have nabbed him at the start. That won’t help us now.” He stared out into the courtyard. “Even if we could have pinned the spout on him, how would you shut him up? You couldn’t transport him quick enough. Do you see it? He’s no fly-by-night. What more had he to lose? I thought I’d leave him be. Let him run around like a wild chicken. I never expected this.”

  “We have to find him, sir. If anyone can tell us where he is, it’s surely Nellie.”

  “I’ll find her. Have words with her. Though, with money in her pocket, she might be anywhere now. How much Bertie’s thrown at her, I don’t know.”

  “Sir, trust me, I can—”

  “I said no, Watchman.” He sat down at his desk. He started to speak, hesitated, and began again. “I’m told you had a woman in here. You’re
a man of surprises, Watchman.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. “I brought a lady, sir, I confess it, who is an expert on literature and mythology and whom I am consulting about the threats.”

  “Get the academics in, that’s right, seeing I made such a hash of it.”

  “It was she pointed out, after our Big Ben debacle, that the beast in his tortuous lair could not be St George’s dragon, but must be the minotaur.”

  “Good at parlour games, is she?”

  “The minotaur, sir, was a monster who required maidens delivered fresh to sate his filthy appetites. Who ended up dead in the labyrinth on the end of a great hero’s sword. He was the son of the king and the shame of the kingdom.”

  “And this woman knows all about it, does she?”

  “Of course not,” I said, though I feared Miss Villiers knew more than she let on.

  “I won’t have it. You’re not a bloody inspector yet. You’ll wait your turn to behave so recklessly.” He pursed his lips. “Talk to everyone again. If he’s been murdering left, right and centre, somebody will talk. Somebody has to talk before he carries out his threat.”

  * * *

  “I’ve all but cracked it,” said Miss Villiers. “I’ve matched cipher annotations in the margins of these books to two of the threats: ‘blind in blood’ and ‘Guy Fawkes was a genius’. That’s half the alphabet. I will keep guessing until I crack the rest. If I could compare a longer section of code to a piece in proper English, I’d have it. For instance…” She dabbed at some splashes on the table, then took from her bag a pristine edition of a periodical, screwing up her nose as she set it down gingerly. “This, I’ve borrowed from the stack.”

  “But it’s a reading library, Miss Villiers, not a lending library.”

  “Shush and look at page twenty-four.”

  “The Beehive,” I frowned as I flicked through it. “Edited by George Potter?”

  “Of the trades unions, yes.” She pointed to an article entitled “The Shameful Slums of the Bethnal Green.” It was a polemical piece, warning of the consequences of leaving the East End to stew in its poverty—threatening even. “Very commendable, but hardly relevant.”

  She pointed out the author’s name. “Berton Kelswick. Does it not sound familiar?” She sighed. “It’s an anagram, you nincompoop. I’ve found several articles under that name in different papers. It has all the hallmarks. He likes Milton, he likes Dante, he likes floods and apocalypses. He’s angry about socio-political injustice.”

  The Bethnal Green piece seemed somehow familiar. I frowned at the periodical. “But what is he going to do?”

  “Overturn the System. Punish the Oppressor. The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” She took a sip of tea. “That would my guess, at least.”

  I stared at her. “How? When?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at me. “He loves planning. He loves righteous tales and inflammatory literature. And he writes. I’ll wager you this: your Mr Skelton will have written down his plan in as much detail as any engineer.”

  I shook my head. “A cunning criminal wouldn’t.”

  “He’s not a criminal. He’s a visionary. He probably won’t even have hidden it.”

  “Now you’re being silly. Why would he not hide it?”

  “Because he’ll have written it in code.” She leaned towards me. “Remember that notebook you saw at his mother’s?”

  * * *

  When I went back to the Rose and Crown, it had gone.

  “What you gawping at, copper?”

  I turned to face a little tyke. Not one of Worm’s, as far as I knew. “The tavern,” I gasped. “The street…”

  You could not simply say it had been demolished. Rather the whole slum of rookeries to which it had stood as portal had been annihilated, sacrificed to Progress. The bold new extension of the Euston Road was already swarming with traffic all the way down to the City. Between this new Farringdon Road and the gentrified centre of Clerkenwell, the engineers had left a chasm, as if they looked at the borough like surgeons and decided to excise the whole area round the cattle market in the hope of reducing infection. Cut and cover, only they had conveniently forgotten to cover.

  “Oh yes.” The little fellow nodded like an old man. “Gone the way of all flesh, eh? We must have this new train, you see. Pity, ’specially for them as lived here.”

  I turned to him earnestly. “Where have they gone, by God?”

  “I moved in with relations, being on more or less good terms, luckily. Those that couldn’t, some are drunk, some in prison, some gone to hell.” He wiped his nose carelessly on his sleeve. “Looking for someone?”

  The boy was amusing and I was happy to give him sixpence. But when I spoke Madame Skelton’s name, he hesitated. For an instant I thought he was going to give the coin back. Instead, he drew his hat low over his eyes and pointed to the last building still standing beside the excavations, a great cowshed where the cattle market had stood.

  “She might be in there,” he murmured, preparing to scarper, “and then again, she might not.”

  Crossing the bridge that carried the Clerkenwell Road across the vast cutting, I looked down towards the grand new station. And to the other side, two tunnels from King’s Cross emerged from the earth, the rails criss-crossing in dizzying confusion.

  As I neared the shed. I spotted a lanky young man, in a long overcoat, watching the door. He was pretending to pass the time of day with a quiet smoke, but he made a point of monitoring all the comings and goings. Had Wardle set guard over the place? Or was it one of Berwick’s associates? I thought of challenging him openly, asking what the game was. But instead I turned tail and hurried away, my mind buzzing.

  Back over the bridge, I noticed one little shop that had survived the upheaval. I stepped into the clockmaker’s, fully expecting another earful from the distasteful little man. The sight that greeted me was shocking. Ganz was wasted away. He barely seemed to recognise me.

  “It’s a scandal,” he muttered. “A scandal and no mistake. That’s what it is. There’s you and ten thousand busybodies, hobnobbing around town, yet you don’t raise a finger to help honest artisans like myself. Highly trained, I am, qualified in the highest arts of clockmaking. Spent my best years studying, and paying the debts from my studies. What good has it done me? None, when the unscrupulous rip open my pieces and copy ’em. Shameless! They churn ’em out by the thousand in manufactories, assembled by wretched northerners for slave wages. I thought mine was an ancient trade and respected. I thought it would never die. I said as much to the Guild. I said, what future is there for us if we sit back while our kingdom is snatched from us?”

  I looked at him. I too had thought the clockmaker’s art safe from the wheels of industry. “What did they say,” I asked, “at the Guild?”

  He gave me a hollow look. “They laughed. Half of them are struggling like me.”

  “And the other half?”

  “The other half own the factories.”

  * * *

  The spy was still outside the cowshed. But, I asked myself, on whose behalf was he spying? I turned north and followed the cutting back up towards King’s Cross, amazed to see the old roads gone, or hidden beneath viaducts. I passed the new Metropolitan station, in front of the Great Northern Terminus, and continued up York Way, where I chanced upon Hunt driving the chaise out of the yard gates, his master within. A feeling of unease gripped at my stomach. I should have talked to Coxhill sooner, but I felt our night on the town somehow gave him a power over me.

  “Sergeant!” Coxhill bellowed. “Step up smartly. Looking for me, are you?”

  I told him I had business in Clerkenwell. He was headed for Mayfair, but as I climbed up he directed Hunt back the way I had come. I would only have a few moments. “Sir,” I began, “do you know—”

  “Have a snifter, old man,” he said, brandishing a hip flask. “Don’t tell me it’s too early. I know you Scotch. Whisky in your porridge, isn’t that ri
ght?”

  “Mr Coxhill—”

  “Can’t tempt you?” He faced me with a charming smile, but I felt he was tensed for a shock. “You won’t mind if I do.”

  “Not at all.” I coughed. “Only tell me this. I am looking for a man named Skelton. Do you know him?”

  The cab swerved, jolting us sideways. Up front Hunt cursed loudly.

  “I do beg your pardon,” said Coxhill pleasantly. He drew out his handkerchief and dabbed at a few spots of brandy splashed on to the seat.

  There were drops on my trousers too and for a moment I feared he would mop them up as well. “Berwick Skelton,” I repeated.

  He frowned thoughtfully, but something outside stole his attention. “Hunt, stop the car. We’re nearly at Ludgate Circus, God damn it. I am sorry, Sergeant.”

  “No matter. But, sir—”

  “Yes, yes. Burton, you say? Name rings a bell. You’ll want to descend this side, old man. Avoid the rotten traffic.”

  “I do not care to descend at all, sir,” I said firmly, “until you answer me plainly. I’m sure you have met him.”

  “Oh yes?” He scratched at his neck. “Can’t say where, for the life of me.”

  “At Mr Dickens’ house, for instance.”

  His birdlike eyes darkened. “I can’t put a face to the name. But Dickens will invite any old johnny-come-lately. I say, you don’t mean one of the servants, do you?”

  The door of the chaise swung open and Hunt appeared. “Allow me to help you down,” he said and fairly wrenched me out onto the pavement. Coxhill prattled away by way of taking leave, and the chaise sprayed my trousers with mud as they pulled away. Was Coxhill playing games? Perhaps Miss Kate had played up their clashes, for Skelton seemed not to have impinged upon his memory at all.