Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

by William Sutton

Yet I couldn’t help but see serendipity in the note’s timing. Finding Nellie still seemed to me the crucial step forward. This friend of the family, far from the city, might be free from the endless webs of secrecy that had so far confounded me. The notion of winding up Skelton’s story was intoxicating.

  I wired St Jude’s in Somerset on the Friday afternoon. After work, I took my time changing, to leave a decent interval for Wardle to catch his train, then headed for Paddington, beneath gathering storm clouds. By the time the Bath train left the suburbs, the night was already black. My first trip out of London since my arrival, more than three years previously, and it seemed as if the whole countryside had been extinguished. I huddled in the corner of the third class carriage, going over and over Skelton’s threats in my head more out of habit than in hope, and dozed fitfully. I had hoped to make sufficient queries that night to find Canon Symon in the early morning and be back by lunchtime. But I was soaked through by the time I stumbled into the station hotel. With no stomach for polite enquiries, I huddled by the fire and considered my options. Should I give up on my country excursion and head back first thing? The Greenhouse would be awash with constables all day. It was a risk, but as long as I was there by early afternoon, I shouldn’t be missed.

  I had counted on finding cheap transport for the day, but the cabbies turned out to be as expensive as their London counterparts and more impertinent. As I sat on the back of a milk cart, gripping the churns as we bumped up muddy country roads, the drizzle came on again and you could barely tell the day had come. The kindly fellow sat a while after setting me down at St Jude’s, on a barren promontory overlooking the river.

  “That be St Jude’s,” he said again, chewing on his tobacco.

  “Thank you,” I repeated, searching about me for signs of life. “And the rectory?”

  The fellow frowned. “St Jude’s, you said.”

  “That’s right, my man. But it’s the priest I need to speak to. Canon Symon.”

  “Symon.” He nodded slowly, seemingly oblivious to the rain streaming over the brim of his hat. “Symon. That’ll be the vicar man, will it? Him as lives on the edge of the village.”

  “The village?” I exclaimed.

  He blinked. The rain lightened for a moment, then set in again. “The village as that we just passed through.”

  * * *

  As I stomped back over the brow of another bleak hill, I was in a foul mood. The last roses of summer were nodding around the eaves of the cottage. The warm yellow light at the windows glowed through the haar, offering indescribable relief, and the notion took me that I must escape from the big city before it proved too much for me.

  “Skelton?” Canon Symon mused in a tone that must have drawn sober reflection from his congregation. “Yes, indeed. I married them.”

  My eyes open wide. “Berwick and Nellie?”

  “Who?” He sat back from the hearth, where my coat and boots were steaming in the heat. “Oh, now, is it the son you mean?”

  Through the windows of his drawing room, I could see sunlight finally breaking through the clouds and onto the Avon Valley. I felt a swell of relief within me, not just the calm of the countryside, I think; rather the hills. I always found it strange in London that not one horizon was fringed with hills. “Yes, sir. Berwick Skelton.”

  “Ah, now, it was the parents I married. Unlucky couple. Perhaps it was a poor match. Astonishing, really, the people that the great city brings together. A fugitive of the French Revolution with an Irish labourer.”

  “Labourer? Was he not an engineer, with Brunel?”

  “May have worked with Brunel. But shovelling rather than engineering.”

  He talked on as I looked about me, thinking of Madame Skelton’s belief that her husband was a great inventor. Was she a fantasist pure and simple? I think not. She simply painted the world, and her loved ones’ place in it, in glowing colours. And who can say that such belief did not imbue Berwick with confidence?

  “Invalided out, as I recall,” Canon Symon continued. “More of a curse than a blessing, though. He took to drink and gambling.” He told me his version of Mr Skelton’s decline, in which he died not on a charitable visit to the Poor House, but rather living there, after his imprisonment for debt in the Clerkenwell House of Detention. It must have impressed upon Berwick that hard work was no security in itself. “The mother did well to keep the boy from going to the bad. A serious child, I recall, industrious and well-intentioned.”

  “And Nellie?”

  “I christened a multitude of Ellens and Eleanors in those days. That’s London, you see. All fashions and fads. Everything is so fast there, don’t you find? Life down here has a little more solidity to it.”

  I burst out in irritation. “Do you know nothing of his engagement?”

  “Why, Sergeant,” he said, palms spread wide in apology, “I had no taste for the revolutionary fervour of the city. I left London in ’49.”

  * * *

  On the train back from Bath, one of those glorious autumn days swept away the remains of the storm and seized hold of the landscape. Yet I was late, and the sunlight dappling the gentle hillsides could not keep my mind from darker things.

  I wondered exactly how much Worm knew. I thought of Shuffler, the Tosher King, returning home from a day under the ground. On a dark street corner he bumps into a small figure, a terrier of a man, a man he knows from certain dealings, as yet unresolved. The man barks for attention. Shuffler makes some amusing remark. The terrier is not amused; the blackmail Shuffler has attempted rises up in his gorge and he strikes out in blind anger. Shuffler, not so young as he once was, is thrown off balance. He stumbles. He falls. The man has chosen the place for its darkness, its silence. Shuffler falls down a flight of steps, tumbling over and over. The man follows vengefully, kicking him down to the darkest corner of hell, making sure he will not return. He checks that Shuffler has stopped breathing—though he does not check carefully enough—and he leaves.

  I thought too of the foolish expense of this vain excursion. I could make no sense of it. Why had Madame Skelton sent me there, when Canon Symon knew far less than she? I studied the note again. The tone was formal: that was convincing. The message was gushing: that was convincing too. But the English was a little too correct. As the train pounded on, closer and closer to home, I studied the handwriting closely, the extravagant “g”, the flourish of the “f” curling into the next letter. I should have known. It was disguised, but there was no doubt. It was written in the same hand as the threats.

  FINALLY NELLIE

  My cab drew up at the Yard, next to a fine carriage, at a quarter past four. I would change my boots and hurry to the Greenhouse. As I was going in, I felt a strange thrill down my spine. I thought I saw a movement within the shutters of the fine carriage—a face, perhaps, withdrawing hastily into the shadows. I stood, indecisive for a moment, until Darlington came out to greet me.

  “There you are,” he said. “Had the day off, have you? A couple of messages. Thought you’d want them before you, you know, went off.” He gave a knowing wink and vanished inside.

  In some confusion, I ripped open the first envelope. “Where are you? Wardle.” I took a deep breath and opened the other, to see Miss Villiers’ elegant writing. About time I heard from you. See you at the stereoscope at 3pm. I put my fingers to my brow. It was as if she had only just received my invitation of months ago. Today, of all days. She would never forgive me.

  “Sergeant Lawless?” called a voice from the fine carriage. Only the full lips speaking my name were visible.

  I was struck with unease. Had one of Madame Lorraine’s girls been engaged to abduct me from my duties? Was I being tricked again? Come, come, there would be hundreds of coppers at the Exhibition’s closing, and I had learned nothing so devastating in these last days that I would need to be kept away.

  The carriage door opened. I tucked away the envelopes and stepped up into the darkness.

  “Where are you headed?” sa
id the lady in clipped tones, as if measuring out each syllable. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I studied the shapely young woman. Striking features she had too, framed by a tumble of russet hair. Whether the radiance of her face was rather a febrile pallor, I was not sure. “You are in a hurry, I fear.”

  “Kensington.”

  “We’d be most happy to give you a lift.”

  I glanced around sharply, afraid there was someone else in the shadows. But it was the royal plural she was using. “Thank you, ma’am. I am expected at the Exhibition.”

  “Business or pleasure?” she smiled.

  “A little of each.”

  She nodded. Leaning out the window, she yelled in a different voice entirely, one that would not have been out of place at Chapel Street Market. “Oi, Foskins. Up the Exhibition, but don’t shift your tired arse too quick. I want a word with the charpering homie.”

  The carriage pulled smoothly away along Whitehall.

  “Please to excuse my yelling, officer,” she said, returning to the refined tones she must have learnt from Groggins. “Only Foskins, being half deaf, is liable otherwise to get hisself horrible confused.”

  “Nellie,” I whispered, fascinated. “Is it yourself?”

  “You seem shocked, officer.” She made a face. “Am I such a monster?”

  I opened my mouth but could find no reply. I had the agreeable sensation that she was playing with me, but my overwhelming feeling was relief. “I am glad to meet you, Miss—”

  “Call me Nellie,” she laughed. “Everyone does.”

  “Nellie,” I sighed. “It’s such a long time I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Looking for me?” she said, a breathlessness in her voice. But perhaps she always spoke that way, as if what you had said had thrilled her. Or, even better, as if she expected the next thing you would say would thrill her. “What’s so fascinating about me?”

  I wanted to hear her version of the story, right from at the beginning. Of the glorious East End romance that Groggins had described. Of their ascent into society, as related by Kate Dickens. Of how Bertie shattered it all. I began at the end. “I’m afraid of what Berwick may do.”

  She clucked at me ironically. “What, start a revolution?”

  “Is that what he wants?”

  “That’s what he always wanted. Even before he met them reformist types. He was a bright one, you know, for all his generosity. I knew that the day I met him. We’re a good match, I told him. We could go a long way on my looks and your brains. We could have a house in Brighton.”

  “But he didn’t want that?”

  “He wanted me to live underground with stinking sewer children. He talked about revolutions. I said, there ain’t never going to be a revolution in England, Berwick. Already has been, Nell, says he. First I heard about it, says I. That’s just it, Nell. They don’t want you to know in case we wants another one to divvy up the riches fair and square. Don’t be a fool, I says. Why do you want to go sharing it out? There’s never enough to go round. We all want as big a share of the cake as we can get, and who can blame us? I told him, you want to stop worrying about the troubles of the world and think a little more of your nearest and dearest. Where’s the fun in being rich if every Tom, Dick and Harry is as well?” She stared out the window, as if troubled by the memory.

  I sat in silence. What she said was reasonable enough. Yet it tarnished her radiance.

  “We went far enough. Me showing a leg and him meeting clever folk. Always his head in a book, that one. Said how his father made it out of the gutter that way, though he didn’t talk so much about how he drank hisself back into it.”

  “You knew the family?”

  “The old man was long gone when we started stepping out, and the old bag wouldn’t have me, not distinguishing treading the boards from whoring. Maybe that’s how things are in France. I’ve acted for this country’s finest, I have. I’ve met the Prime Minister, and the Queen.” She broke off, aware that she was entering dangerous ground. “That’s the truth, not like the tall tales she’ll tell you of her husband.”

  “Do you still see him?”

  She glared at me, then her look softened. “Berwick, you mean? I thought you was talking about Bertie. Cheek of it, I thought, when it’s your lot that have soured my name with him. Ruined it all.” She eyed me darkly. “You think I’m a fool. I can see you do. That a prince would never court a girl like me, even now that I talk proper.”

  “No, Nellie,” I said, “I can see why a prince would court you.”

  “Think what you like,” she shrugged. “You didn’t see how he wooed me. He nearly wet hisself when we met after The Frozen Deep. Courted me proper, he did. Promised to take me off the stage and look after me. Private box at the Evans. At Roxy’s country pile. Riding out down Cremorne Gardens.” She cradled the words with such pleasure, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Wardle had arranged all these things for the Prince. “Have you seen the gardens lately? Flags of every nation draping the pavilion. Like the old jousting tournaments. We watched this Frenchman fly there, in his balloon, you know. A fearful crash he fell with. Killed on the spot. Marvellous.” She lowered her head to give me a thrilling smile, then stuck out her bottom lip like a child. “Then you lot started interfering.”

  That was what Nellie wanted. She wanted exotic men falling to their death for her amusement; knights in shining armour jousting for her attentions, jousting to the death for her sport. “What did you expect? Did you think Bertie would marry you?”

  She gave a wry smile. “I used to pester him, that he’d never marry a commoner like me. Only princesses for the likes of you, I’d say. Then I get this beautiful invite, summer of ’58 it was. A carriage rolls up, takes me down the Thames, and he’s had the tunnel fête shut for the afternoon so’s we can ride the miniature railway. He gets all lovely and stroppy with it. ‘I’m going to marry whom I damn well like,’ he goes. We had a lark, back and forth on the train, the stalls all lit up, never mind they were shut. ‘Bertie,’ I says, ‘build us a train under London, won’t you, so’s we can go wherever we like without anyone telling us no.’ He smiles and says, ‘You shall have your secret train, Nellie.’ He takes out this gold watch and gives it me. I says, ‘What, you trying to make an honest woman of me, young Bertie?’ ‘One day, Eleanor,’ he says, ‘we’ll ride on your train beneath London and I’ll make an honest woman of you.’ And he kissed me.”

  Throughout our talk, I couldn’t help but smile at the lapses in her vowels. It was as if she spoke two different languages, and it was always an effort to stick to the correct one. “And Berwick?”

  “Fuss and drama I expected.” She frowned. “All he did was stare. He stared at me and let me go.”

  That had clearly upset more than any amount of stomping and shouting.

  “Hester told me I was a doxy haybag. That Bertie was out for improper favours. He’d never treat me like a lady. I was a fool for dropping Berwick who loved me. She was always sweet on him, though. Don’t look at me like that, like you’re on her side. What would you do? Your sweetheart gives you a watch that he’s lifted and christened for you; then a prince of the realm only goes and buys you a gold one. You wear the gold one, don’t you? Anyone would. That was what got Berwick all moony-eyed.”

  “You were engaged.”

  “S’pose I was. He asked and I’d said I might. Didn’t owe him nothing. I helped him out of the gutter. Where is he now? Gone and got himself back into it like his old man after all, never mind his ideals and fancy talk.” She pulled at a strand of her hair. “There was always going to be problems. He never liked my touring. I couldn’t stand him wasting his time and his brains on committees of wastrels and moaners.”

  “Wasting time?”

  “I want my husband caring about me, not Yorkshire weavers and nigger slaves. Berwick could have got himself a position. He knew people. But he was too busy, overthrowing the System.”

  “Are you not afraid he’s going abou
t these plans now?”

  She looked at me. “Nah. He’ll have forgotten me by now.”

  “I don’t believe anyone forgets you. I think he’s plotting his revenge.”

  “Revenge? He’s not the sort.”

  “And the spout at Euston?”

  “Just playing up.” She looked up at the window, sadness flashing over her face as a street light lit up her hair. “We’re there, Sergeant.”

  “Where is he now, Nellie?”

  “Berwick? Haven’t seen him for a month of Sundays.”

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. She was slipping from my grasp as soon as I’d found her. Except it was she who had found me. “Then why did you come?”

  She rubbed her stomach absently for a moment then smiled dazzlingly. “I’m glad it’s you, you know, and not that inspector of yours. He’s been a curse to me from the beginning.”

  I gestured at the carriage around us. “Is it him has given you all this?”

  “I am far from destitute, officer,” she said, drawing herself up and resorting to that false voice, “despite the indelicacies I have been put through.”

  I shook my head in desperation. “Why now, though, after hiding so long?”

  “I wasn’t hiding from you, young fellow.” She reached out and touched my chin, a gentle gesture, but it could not win me over. She was sad, it was true, but somehow not sad enough for my liking. Her face was luminescent within the dark carriage, but there was a toughness in her voice. “He’s asked me to leave.”

  “Who?”

  “They’re paying me off. Me! It’s a liberty. Ain’t it a liberty?”

  “Wardle?” I looked away. “I didn’t know.”

  “Take him a message, will you? Tell him it’s not enough. There’s complications needing dealt with and they’d better see me right. There’s this finishing school in Switzerland I rather fancy the sound of. Need a good word from a gentleman, and a few pennies to boot. I’m sure there’s an arrangement will suit us all.” She smiled again, touched me on the shoulder, then turned away with a swish of her hair to tell me that our interview was at an end.