The Street Philosopher

by Matthew Plampin

  ‘You take my point, though, Freddie?’ Bill insisted. ‘Carpe diem and all that?’

  They were moving past him. Cracknell fell in a safe distance behind. Over the top of the hedges, in the direction of their voices, a blue and a black top hat could be seen in the gathering darkness, bobbing slowly away towards the cave.

  ‘This debate is entirely pointless,’ Keane declared coldly. ‘I am here, am I not? Does that not indicate a sufficient measure of willingness, despite what I might say?’ He sighed in a long-suffering manner. ‘Will your sister not suspect, though–her or that string-bean beau of hers?’

  Bill laughed disbelievingly. ‘By my soul, is that envy in your voice, Freddie? Are you actually jealous of the favour our Mr Kitson has found with the delectable Jemima James?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ snapped Keane, so harshly that it made the denial a little unconvincing. ‘Your sister may keep whatever company she chooses. I care not a fig.’

  ‘Very well,’ Bill answered slyly. ‘I must say, though, that I can understand her interest. There’s something about him–not immediately apparent, perhaps, but it’s there. A kindness, one might call it, about the eyes…’

  ‘But they will not suspect?’ interrupted Keane tetchily. ‘About our unexplained departure and long absence? That Kitson fellow is on the Star, if you recall–a damned street philosopher.’

  ‘Oh come, Freddie,’ Bill chuckled. ‘We left them by the pavilion, with a bottle of Moët and a good view of the boards. They won’t even notice that we’ve gone.’ The pair had reached the middle of the maze. ‘Now, cease your fretting. Our new friends are just ahead.’

  Their footsteps retreated into the distance. The Tomahawk felt like breaking into a jig. This was a singular piece of luck. A solid, hard-hitting scheme for the evening had dropped into his lap all but fully formed. Before leaving for the pavilion, however, he crept towards the centre of the maze, sticking to its darkest corners. Beyond the system of hedges was a small courtyard. The blue top hat, recently discarded, rolled around on its cracked stone slabs. Rising up behind was a low artificial hill, into which had been dug a shallow cave. As he peered inside, Cracknell’s wily smirk grew wider.

  4

  The conductor, clad in immaculate dinner dress, towered over the blazing hub of the dancing boards. Facing the dancers from his place on the orchestra stand, he waved his baton in a sequence of extravagant flourishes, as if marshalling them as well as the musicians. With one commanding sweep, he dismissed those gentlefolk in need of rest or refreshment; and with another, he summoned a fresh contingent from their tables, arranging them neatly upon the floor. The orchestra behind him struck up another waltz. A handful of working people, recently arrived from the mills, their faces washed of grime at the Hyde Road pump, stood at the edge of the boards as if considering joining the dance. An imperious glare from the conductor made them promptly decide that they could use some more ale first, and perhaps a slice of pie.

  Surrounding the dancing boards and the pavilion were over a hundred circular tables, each with a small candle flickering in its centre. Waiters glided expertly between them, taking orders and delivering trays laden with bottles and plates. A mixed clientele sat at these tables, but all were alive with chatter, and engaged in careful scrutiny of those around them. Well-to-do parents fed their dazed offspring iced biscuits and Eccles cakes whilst they waited for the fireworks to start, smiling cheerfully but alert for the approach of any manner of miscreant. Parties of top-hatted men laughed uproariously, calling for more champagne, constantly on the lookout for female companionship of any character. Swells and jades, resplendent in borrowed finery, sipped cadged drinks and scanned for marks. And the factory operatives, massing on the lawns in between the dancing boards and the Belle Vue’s outer wall, watched the waltz as if it was the gardens’ most spectacular exhibit, whistling and whooping at their favourite couples. Scorning the waiters, these parties sent their younger members on missions for bottles of beer, unwrapped parcels of provisions, and settled down to enjoy their evening.

  Thomas Kitson and Jemima James went over to a table at the fringes of the crowd, away from the noise of the dancing. Kitson’s eyes were raking through the merriment all around them, trying to locate black-suited men.

  Mrs James had written to him two days after the company visit. The letter had stated her continued confidence in their friendship, in simple, forceful language–words he had read many times over in his attic on Princess Street–and it had requested this meeting. This had surprised him. He had assumed that the best course for them to follow after the clash in Saloon F was to wait until after the Queen’s visit, and Cracknell’s departure from Manchester, before cautiously renewing their correspondence. The risk to them both at this time was surely great, yet he could not refuse her; and he had known that there must be a very good reason for her to make this reckless proposition.

  She appeared not to have slept properly for some time, and was animated with anxiety. As soon as they sat, she began to talk; her voice, usually so elegant and even, slipped on her words like shoes rushing in panic over wet cobblestones. Her eyes remained fixed on the rust-spotted table-top.

  ‘Mr Kitson, when we stood before Raphael’s Pilate in the Exhibition, I was struck by a sense that I knew the painting somehow. In the–the furore that followed I had no opportunity to consider this further, but once I was at home it began to trouble me, very deeply.’ She paused for a single second. ‘I managed to recall where I had seen it before.’

  A waiter set the bottle of champagne Bill Norton had ordered in the centre of the table, and placed a glass before each of them. Kitson leant forward a little, studying Mrs James closely. She seemed near to tears..

  ‘It was in the March of 1855. My father had just returned from the Crimea and informed me of my husband’s death. Anthony was a gifted man, a–a brilliant man. His loss was difficult indeed for me to bear. We had only been married a year.’ She swallowed, and took a deep breath. ‘I was deep in grief, and could not rest. My doctor gave me a sleeping draught, a strong concoction of his own devising. I slept soundly, and felt asleep even whilst I was awake. I was in my father’s old house in Lower Broughton–they would not let me stay in my marital house alone. Very early one morning, I came downstairs. Dear God, I had forgotten this entirely before that day in the Exhibition. I’m not sure that I knew exactly where I was.’ Mrs James raised a hand to her face, pressing her fingertips against her brow. She closed her eyes. ‘It was there, in the drawing room. That panel.’

  Kitson stared at her. ‘The Pilate? Are you sure?’

  She frowned. ‘Almost. It is difficult … I remember standing transfixed; and crouching on the floor, after a while. It seemed so unreal. I was found by the chambermaid and put back to bed with another dose of my sleeping draught. Some days later, I mentioned it to my father. He was dismissive, saying that it was just something he had picked up in Italy on his return journey with the intention of making a profit on a quick resale. I was a little taken aback that he had made such a detour whilst bearing news of my husband’s death, but otherwise thought no more of it. The painting itself had already gone.’ She lowered her hand and looked up at him. ‘This is the connection, though, is it not? This is why Cracknell so despises my father?’

  Kitson sat back heavily in his chair and glanced out at the looping line of bright orange dots that ran around the edge of the lake. So this was how the panel had been removed from the Crimea. Some kind of a pact had been made between Norton and Boyce. Kitson had devoted much of the previous week to hunting down Cracknell, in order to discover both what he knew and what he was planning, but without success. Now his former senior’s antipathy towards Charles Norton had been at least partly explained.

  He turned back to Mrs James. Despite the declarations of her letter, there was an uncomfortable tension building between them. She clearly could not help thinking that he had been concealing things from her. Kitson saw that only the truth would dispel this mi
strust. So, as the waltz over on the dancing boards became a polka and then a foxtrot, he told of how he had come to be in the Crimea under Cracknell’s leadership; and how the events on the morning of Inkerman had brought them to the villa that held the Pilate.

  ‘It was from this secluded place that Boyce’s men stole it,’ he concluded. ‘And afterwards, it seemed to vanish completely.’

  Mrs James was growing more upset. ‘My father’s contracts,’ she broke in. ‘The spikes for the Crimean railway, and the first few batches of buckles. He obtained them through Brigadier Boyce, didn’t he? In exchange for shipping his plunder back to Britain?’

  ‘It seems likely.’ Kitson hesitated, momentarily unsure of how much to reveal, but quickly deciding that she deserved to know everything. He looked at her steadily and spoke as gently as he could. ‘There is more, I’m afraid. Men were killed–murdered at Boyce’s behest to cover up his looting. Cracknell and I tried to draw the army’s attention to this. We were not heeded.’

  She stared back at him in absolute horror. ‘But–but my father does not know of these killings, surely? Why would Boyce have told him of them?’

  Kitson did not answer. It was his guess that Norton had either been aware of the murders from the start and been prepared to overlook them for his own benefit, or had been informed as soon as he was committed to the arrangement, in order to make him an accessory and thus ensure both his silence and his further cooperation.

  Mrs James sat stunned, gazing blankly at the bottle of champagne that stood untouched before them. ‘So Richard Cracknell is actually in the right,’ she murmured. ‘His provocations are wholly justified.’

  A great disturbance erupted over by the side of the dancing boards as a table was thrown over and a good deal of glass broken. There were angry shouts and a high-pitched scream; the orchestra faltered, and then shuddered to a halt. All dancing stopped, and many of those at the far-flung tables rose from their seats, craning their necks and standing on their chairs to try to see what was causing the commotion.

  Kitson got up. A bloody fight was underway; he could see someone lying on the floor, clutching at his neck, and several others locked in a pitched battle. His assistance was needed. He looked at Mrs James. She remained lost in her troubled reflections.

  ‘I will return,’ he said to her. ‘As soon as I can.’

  She nodded absently; and he started towards the boards, shouldering his way through the gaping crowds.

  Although contending with his bad leg, which was now throbbing something rotten, Cregg still managed to stagger out in front, throwing aside a couple of tables and leading Stewart off into one of the gardens’ largest unlit areas. They sustained their weaving pace for a few hundred yards, and then collapsed into a rhododendron bush.

  ‘What did ye have to go and do that for, eh?’ panted Stewart from amongst the leaves. ‘I was enjoying meself, so I was!’

  ‘Cunt was botherin’ me,’ growled Cregg. ‘Did you not see wot ’e did to me leg? Did you not, Stewart?’

  ‘That’s our Dan,’ his companion sniggered. ‘A reg’lar blessing t’ the people of Manchester. A friend t’ all, aren’t ye, Dan?’ He laughed on, until Cregg signalled a wish for silence by punching him in the stomach.

  After his rejection on Mosley Street, Cregg had drunk himself under for the best part of a week. He had emerged with a solid determination to destroy both Boyce and the bastard Cracknell, who had brought him this far only to abandon him. His liquor-crazed imagination assured him that by watching the Courier man as he went about his business, he could easily learn of the details of this precious scheme. It could then be cunningly adjusted so that it both did for Boyce and blew up in the cocksure correspondent’s face–leaving Cregg, the victor, to walk away wearing his satisfaction like a golden crown.

  But the bottle impeded Cregg’s efforts even to follow Cracknell, let alone outwit him. Catching sight of the newspaper man that afternoon, therefore, as he hailed a cab on Oxford Street, had been something of a turn-up–even more so because Stewart had clearly heard him instruct the driver to take him to the Belle Vue. Once there, however, after walking out to Ardwick and scrambling over a quiet stretch of wall, they had been completely unable to find him. They wandered around the grounds and greenhouses for a gloomy half-hour. Then Stewart, whose purse was somehow full again, suggested that they take refreshment over by the dancing boards. Some cotton-spinner had jostled Cregg, knocking his bad leg, and refused to meet his eye when apologising–and now they were hiding in a rhododendron bush. Bleedin’ typical, thought Cregg as he crouched in the damp soil. Lost bleedin’ everything but me knack for drawing trouble.

  Pulling the brim of his cap low over his eyes, he peered out in the direction from which they had fled. A mob of working people, headed by a crusher with his stick at the ready, was advancing towards them, fanning out through the darkened gardens and muttering in a distinctly menacing manner.

  ‘Stewart!’ His companion had dozed off. ‘Stewart, come on!’

  Cregg didn’t wait, but clambered out of the bush and charged off into the night. Someone spotted him, and the cry went up. Stewart, yelling in confusion, rolled from the rhododendron on to the surrounding lawn. He tried to get to his feet, but liquor overwhelmed him and he fell over backwards. Cregg, reaching a stand of trees, looked back. The mob was on Stewart, kicking viciously in the righteous belief that they had got their man. The policeman attempted to restrain them, but his shouts, and even blows from his stick, were being completely ignored. Cregg smiled grimly and headed for the gate.

  * * *

  Kitson finished binding the neck of a fallen factory operative. He felt oddly calm, and entirely lucid. After requesting dressings from the onlookers, he had been supplied with a dainty muslin shawl by the operative’s weeping sweetheart; blood was already starting to blot through the pale blue fabric. The man shifted, trying to lift his arm, his eyes rolling in panic. Kitson instructed him to be still.

  Nothing was happening to him. No awful visions were descending–no dismal delusions taking hold. Glancing up at the dense circle of faces craning in above, which displayed a mixture of concern, horror and morbid fascination, he listened hard, yet could detect no sounds besides the excited chattering of the crowd. Blinking, he returned his attention to the injured man. The operative’s heavy, fearful features, his downy beard, all remained resolutely the same, secure from transformation. The circumstances were very like those in Tamper’s Yard, where he had unwittingly saved Wray–on the day he had met Mrs James. A wounded man was stretched out before him. Blood coated his hands and was smeared liberally across the boards on which he knelt. Yet this time his perceptions were entirely unaltered.

  Kitson stood, shards of glass crunching beneath his boots. Two policemen had arrived at the scene from the direction of Hyde Road; the constables were pushing apart the remaining combatants and helping those with more minor injuries to their feet. Wiping his hands on his jacket, Kitson informed them that the operative, although gravely injured, was out of immediate danger. It was clear enough what had transpired: someone had smashed a beer bottle over the victim’s head, and then driven the broken end into his neck. One of the constables began canvassing witnesses for a description of the assailant. He was huge, some said, a giant with tattooed forearms like a sailor. Nay, he was little, countered others, weasly and dirty, a runt of a man. He only had one eye; he had no thumbs; he had a cudgel, or was it a dagger? His hair was uncommonly long; it was short; he wore a top-hat, a pill-box, a bowler. The only thing that united this profusion of accounts was the enthusiasm with which they were delivered.

  Then one voice, loud and certain, rose over the clamour. ‘’E were a southerner–London type. A cripple. His chum, the paddy, called ’im Cregg.’

  Kitson recognised the name straight away. Furthermore, he remembered where he had heard it–in the siege-works around Sebastopol. And this Cregg was described as a cripple, like Wray’s attacker and the arsonist of the 25th Manchester
s. A palpable sense of threat closed around him–Cregg’s appearance in Manchester could not be a coincidence. He turned towards the table where he had left Mrs James. She had gone.

  A party assembled behind one of the constables, and started out into the gardens with the intention of flushing out the attacker and bringing him to justice. Kitson walked rapidly to the edge of the dancing boards, the people parting before him with the particular deference reserved for healers. He stepped up on to a chair to give himself a better view across the lake. And there, over on its opposite bank, was Mrs James, moving hurriedly between pools of gaslight. A familiar, well-built figure was by her side, dressed in a top hat and dark coat. He had a cane gripped in one hand, and Jemima’s forearm in the other. She glanced back, her pale face bathed in orange light; even at that distance, Kitson could see her alarm.

  Mr Twelves watched coolly from the pavilion as Kitson of the Star plunged from his chair and sprinted off into the night. Twelves had, of course, noticed the abduction of Mrs James by Richard Cracknell. This was unforeseen; the assumption had been that the two men were working together. Nevertheless, they had to be followed. It was time to act.

  Making a final entry in his notebook, the investigator gathered his men with a series of curt whistles and gestures. He held them in place for thirty seconds; and then commenced the pursuit.

  5

  ‘So heroic, ain’t he,’ Cracknell snorted. ‘Stepping forward when he is needed most. So bloody admirable.

  They had cleared the lake, leaving the illuminated path and starting out across a lawn. Cracknell was moving fast, all but dragging Jemima along with him. Her exclamations of disbelieving protest were ignored, and her attempts to break his grasp entirely ineffective. It had all happened very quickly. She had been looking down towards the crowds on the dancing boards when a large hand had fastened around her arm and pulled her away as powerfully as if she had been attached to a locomotive. Cracknell had identified himself almost immediately, wishing her good evening before launching into a sarcastic speech about Mr Kitson’s medical exertions.