Trumpets Sound No More

by Jon Redfern

  “Guilio and Franco Grisi, I arrest you in the name of the Law,” shouted Inspector Endersby. “Stand and be taken into custody.”

  Endersby began to cross the crooked floor. His face remained ruddy from climbing the stairs. His right arm with its closed fist resembled a battering ram. Behind him, in forced unison, Sergeant Birken and the City constable. A phalanx of the Law, Endersby thought in a flash of pride. “Do not move, brothers Grisi,” he commanded. But the two felons—betrayed, discovered, cornered—were not in a mind to obey. They both dodged to the left of the phalanx in the direction of the open window. The mustached Grisi hopped up and down as if to frighten the advancing cohort. The other Grisi, dagger held forth, shouted in Italian what Endersby surmised were vile curses.

  “Onward, men,” said Endersby.

  Sergeant Birken leapt forward in a display of muscle and speed and grabbed the mustache by his neck, consequently to wrestle the hopping villain to the floor. Seeing this, his eyes widened in sudden terror, the dagger-slashing Grisi took a stance against Endersby, blade to the inspector’s throat. A black expression froze the ruffian’s face. “Muori,” he spat at Endersby.

  The inspector stamped his foot. His allied City constable raised his fists, ready to pummel the glaring miscreant. “Dodg’im,” whispered Endersby. Quickly, the inspector winked. Mustering his energy, he raised his threatened throat from the vicinity of the pointed blade. Brave of you, his thoughts flashed. Now rise—his sudden tip-toes distracted the frantic dagger holder. The constable—on cue—dashed this confused Grisi from behind. He shoved hard. The blow found its mark. Rammed on the back and forced forward, this Grisi brother’s chin collided favourably (in the Law’s eyes) with Endersby’s suede fist. The dagger clanged to the floor.

  “Hold him,” shouted Endersby. From his satchel he yanked out two pieces of stout cord. He threw one to the constable. In a turn, he moved to Sergeant Birken, who now after much tumbling, rolling, and slapping had secured the other Grisi by pinning his arms down. Endersby wrapped the cord around the writhing man’s wrists. A hard knot held tight two crossed hands. In a trice, the two felons were upright, their energies and curses falling low and silent.

  “To Scotland Yard, gentlemen. Have them give out a confession and write it down. Take no resistance and force them if need be.”

  Sergeant Birken and the constable led the Grisi brothers down to the street. Endersby meanwhile wiped his hands on a cloth and sat for a moment. He recovered his breath and planned his next move.

  “Come, old gander. No time for resting. Move on, quick.”

  * * *

  Without delay, Endersby found a cab and was soon on his way toward Old Drury and its busy neighborhood. He always pictured the theatre as a great moored galleon—flags lowered, its portico like a prow—permanently in dry dock. Still, despite its age and faded façade, the grand place had the capacity for adventure, the promise of golden lands of the imagination within its fabled reach. By its side, Owen stepped from the cab and gazed at the theatre’s steeped roof before paying the driver and walking with purpose through the coaches and pedestrians, first to call for Reggie Crabb, then to cross Vinegar Yard. The tavern welcomed him with its smoky air and the cheery smile of the barkeep. Endersby quickly found his appointed table, and within minutes he had assembled a young company of two companions.

  “You are Betty Loxton,” said Endersby in a tone of voice which carried curiosity and gentleness. “I am Inspector Owen Endersby of the Metropolitan Detective Force.”

  “You, sir, are a policeman?” Betty wondered, her face pinched.

  “He is that and more,” said young Reggie Crabb. “And you must call him that. Inspector.” The noise from the tavern intruded their enclave—laughter, coughing, the clink of glasses. A hearth was blazing.

  Betty Loxton put her hand into a pocket of her skirt and lifted a dried flower into the dim light of the late afternoon. “’Tis all I have for my memory of dear Samuel,” she said.

  The character in her face touched Endersby, though it was pity he felt uppermost for the pretty street girl. She seemed a proud, hopeful child, no more than fourteen. In this tavern smoke, her face looked much healthier all in all than the last time he’d seen it, when its youthful mistress stood tethered to a wall like a nanny goat.

  “Go on, Betty. Tell him,” prompted Reggie.

  Betty raised her eyes to Endersby and curtsied. In his turn, the inspector sat forward and removed his coat. Betty seemed incapable of knowing where to place her hands, tucking them under her shawl, fiddling with a strand of hair. Her voice started husky and low.

  “My mam, known in these parts as Pineapple Pol, she has a brother, Thomas, from Surrey. He come up last Friday, and he and…” Betty stopped. Endersby believed he saw an expression of horror mixed with sadness on the poor girl’s face. Thus, he felt justified in reaching out to her and asking her to sit down.

  In gratitude, Betty sat on the edge of a chair pulled up for her by Reggie.

  “It were done for me, they said. Even Stephen. Eye for an eye.”

  “Go on,” said Endersby.

  “Mr. Cake, he comes to me one afternoon on the street. Not a fortnight ago it was. He says to me, ‘You wish to make a penny or two, pretty gal?’

  ‘Yes, sir. How sir?’

  ‘Come to the Coburg, Surrey side, Waterloo Road. This afternoon at two.’

  “The street was so busy I daren’t leave, what with apples to shout and all. But I wanted so to go. My mam, she is hard with her hand and said to me never to think of the stage. Though I go to the Gaff on Wednesdays to dance and do jiggling. So, I hawked my ware, I threw the rottens to the gutter, and I went to Waterloo Road.”

  ‘Ah, there you are young Betty,’ says Samuel Cake. ‘This way.’

  ‘Now it is only a contraption, he says in his sweet voice, and I sees this odd man beside him, all greasy and wearing grease on his face and hands. ‘No harm to you at all. It goes up and then down.’

  “And who are you, sir?” says I, bold as brass, to the greasy man to show I takes no mischief.

  ‘I am Barnwell, Gregorious Barnwell, brother to Mr. Cake.’

  ‘There, good girl. Now stand still and let Mr. Barnwell fit the harness.’

  ‘She is ready, Samuel.’

  ‘Hold on, little Betty, says my sweet Samuel. ‘There is naught to fear.’

  “And so I did, I held on and up into the air the contraption flew. A flying chair it was, and it was so slippery and so wobbly, I moved and kicked. Down I come so fast I hit the floor. Lucky I was not so far in the heavens to crack myself.”

  ‘Oh, girl, are you all right?’ says the greasy man. ‘Get up, that’s it. Now Samuel, we need to put the brace on her and attach her to the chair. It’ll hurt a little, Miss Betty. There, now let me tighten it. There, all is safer.’

  ‘Hold on, Betty,’ says Samuel. ‘That’s it. Four pennies, and you shall fly every night.’

  “But no, the chair tips, and the wire works loose, and I comes down a second time and with a crack on them boards, and poor Mr. Cake, he was sad, and his arms came out to me. They did, they really did and he held me. ‘Oh, but the greasy man said no, she cannot, she’s too fidgety, she’s a pretty one but she is no stager.’ Then my Samuel, he lets me go, out to the street once again. Pays me but a penny. My mam, she shouts at me when I comes home afterwards. ‘What nonsense now, girl…and you black and blue. Who done this to you?’

  “’Mam, t’is nothing,” I said to her. “But my mam takes no guff. Never takes never for an answer.

  “‘You foolish git, look what you’ve done. How can you carry a basket with your back all hurt and bent.’

  “‘Don’t, mam, don’t.’

  “‘I told you, no scamping about. I’ll none o’ that nonsense.’

  “‘What is up, mam?’ says my brother John the Pawn, he coming in just then to settle the ruckus.

  “‘Lookee, John, a scoundrel has hurt our Betty. Look on this. This ain’t right. No
t right, and now we are to be without her neck to carry apples. Stupid girl.’

  “‘Who done it to you?” he asks me, his hand ready to hit me. “Speak up, Betty.”

  All this story was uttered in a passionate way. Endersby watched astonished as Betty acted it out, her voice changing as the characters in the story came and went. Her face screwed into a frown to show Pineapple Pol; her eyes fluttered every time she said the name of Samuel Cake.

  “And then what happened?” Endersby had little time to surmise the answer, for Betty was quick, almost furious in her response.

  “All I knows is they planned to scare him. Thomas with his club. And my brother John the Pawn and Peter the Stick, he went, too. Mam drove them in the cart, and we was told—me and Clare, my sister—to hush and tell nobody. They went and came back late, and they was laughing, and they was telling how they broke up the house. John the Pawn, he was hoping to meet Mr. Cake. He been to talk to him once after the contraption hurt me…just to warn him…but Mr. Cake, he was not frightened of John. And I knows John, he likes to scare people.”

  Sergeants Caldwell and Stott entered the tavern and walked over to Endersby’s table. They took off their hats in silence and stood by their chairs as Betty Loxton finished her story.

  “Can you write and read, Betty?” asked Endersby.

  “No, Inspector. Only my numbers.”

  “Can you tell your story again if need be?”

  “But where, sir? You mean to you once again?”

  “Or in the courts. Or to the magistrate.”

  Young Reggie Crabb took to his feet like a soldier bracing for battle. “You cannot, sir, cannot let her go in there. They will damn her for sure.”

  Endersby took Reggie by the shoulder. He held him face-to-face. “No, young lad. It is not of my doing. It is the Law which requires it.”

  Young Reggie withdrew, his head held down. “She done nothing, sir. I seen her do nothing but good,” he said.

  “I believe you, young lad. But it is she who must stand by her tale. It is as true as you can tell it, young miss?”

  Betty now shoved both hands under her shawl and carefully regarded the assembly before her. She passed her eyes around the room, first to Endersby, then the two waiting sergeants. Such a sigh of remorse escaped her lips that Endersby himself was surprised by it. “Tell my sergeants the tale once again,” Endersby said softly. “Let them hear the part about the club and what happened on Friday night last. This is very important, young Betty. For you, and for Mr. Cake. We do not want the courts to send the wrong folk to the gallows, do we?”

  “The gallows, sir?”

  It was obvious to Endersby—certainly, it was clear even to the staring eyes of Reggie Crabb—that Betty had not considered this consequence. Her own mother and brother and uncle—all were culpable, all were candidates for Newgate prison. Worse, any one of them might swing from a rope if her own words were to make it so. Endersby was moved by Betty’s wild eyes, now full of tears.

  “I tell the truth, even if I lose my old mam. But I can only say what I know.”

  Against what seemed her better judgment, Betty told the tale again, making sure she spoke slowly, with eyes held on the inspector’s face. Sergeants Caldwell and Stott stood as witnesses. No change to the details was proffered: the costers had gone to Cake’s house, smashed it, and come home. Betty then asked if she could be allowed to return to the comfort of Old Drury. Endersby suggested young Reggie Crabb accompany her.

  On the boy’s way out, Endersby cautioned him once more. “Here, lad, is your shilling as promised. Keep an eye out for tonight and tomorrow. Keep your ears open for any word that might help. We are busy tonight, but on the morrow, I shall call for you, if need be.”

  The boy tipped his cap and led a pale Betty Loxton out of the room.

  Soon after the two waifs had shut the door, Endersby called over his sergeants and asked them to share pints of porter and to begin their own peculiar tales.

  * * *

  Endersby first drew Stott into his confidence, where he hoped the trials and journeys of his sergeant’s afternoon might bring forth facts which could serve to enlighten the three men, all of whom were on the brink of discovery, even if they still hovered in a limbo of swirling suppositions.

  “And so, Sergeant Stott,” he began, “what revelations do you bring us?”

  Stott’s face did not light up with enthusiasm as Endersby had hoped; nevertheless, his story was recounted with vigour.

  “They work hard, John the Pawn and Pineapple Pol. She is a tough hen, sir. All afternoon, I lurked in the Garden, watching them sell. I followed the hen to a flat, where she led out another young gal and sent her forth with a basket of lemons. I took coffee beside them, heard them talk in their coster language—it is hard to follow at times. But I found out that Wednesdays, tonight for certain, they go to the Gaff. It is a kind of entertainment, a make-shift theatre near St. Paul’s. A place of lewd ballads and what the costers call ‘jiggling.’”

  “Young Betty Loxton claimed she dances and sings at this odd place.”

  “Yes, Inspector. It is a place where the young coster lads take their gals to dance. The tobacconists—across the way from the Loxton stall—they claim much more goes on there.”

  “More of what?”

  “Thieving, jostling, rogering, sir.”

  “A stew, then. A nanny-house?”

  “On occasion, so they said. It’s a place for bucks to mount does in the back corners behind the rows of men and women watching the shows.”

  “A penny an entrance, no doubt.”

  “A ha’penny, sir.”

  “So, tonight John the Pawn and Pineapple Pol shall go.”

  “For certain, sir.”

  “We must risk going too, Stott. Indeed, we must conjure up a game for them. A ruse to trap ’em.”

  “I would not frame such a thing on my own, sir. They are a hard lot. They carry clubs and knives.”

  “Stott, I mean that we—Caldwell and I—shall go, and with a constable to aid us. A constable to catch any bolters who try to run outside of the place.”

  “It is not for me, then, to come along?”

  “Ah, believe in me, Sergeant Stott. With all that I know to this point, I shall need you in reserve. But tarry a moment.”

  Endersby looked at his two sergeants with a hard gaze. His impatience and ever-nagging hunger were driving him to act on impulse. He had reviewed all the facts, fitted the puzzle, tried to see a series of scenes as in a play, his memory traces affording him perspective. This thinking did nothing, however, to calm his doubts. In fact, they drove him to know the end of the rigmarole. Endersby leaned into Caldwell and examined his face.

  “As you can see, sir,” responded his sergeant, “my wounds have healed somewhat.”

  “But you still look the tough fighter,” said Stott.

  “One who has lost the latest scuffle,” quipped Endersby. “But such yellowings and scabs shall provide us with our ruse.”

  “How so, sir? And what shall we effect by it?’

  “My good man,” retorted Endersby gruffly, “let me explain when I come up with the ruse itself; you are too impatient, and I am in need of some supper.”

  Uttering a cry to the waiters, the irritable inspection stamped his healthy foot. Presently, a server appeared and was commanded to bring a hot eel soup, a potato pie and a plate of cold tongue. Endersby also asked for a quill, a scrap of paper, an inkwell—all brought to him within a wink—and a runner-boy who could be trusted. “Do not figure this to be a note for our superintendent, gentlemen,” Endersby spoke as he wrote on the scrap of paper. “It is, rather, an apology to my wife whom I must abandon this evening at the supper hour.” A rush of colour entered Endersby’s cheeks as he wrote. The two sergeants meanwhile pulled chairs from the table behind him, sat down nearer the hearth and began warming their hands. From the mantel Caldwell took two clay pipes out of a cup and filled them with caches of his own tobacco. Both men lit
up and relaxed in their chairs, their feet pushed out before them.

  “You see, gentlemen, my wife is my life’s accomplice.” Endersby’s voice took on a tender, musing tone. “I must keep her informed, more for my own peace of mind than hers.”

  The running-boy was summoned. Endersby gave him a penny, with the promise of another, and drew out for him the direction of Number 6 Cursitor Street. “I knows it, Guv’. Sure as the back of me hand. Past the hospital, in the shadow of the prison.”

  “Run then, and quick.”

  The server now entered. Plates of food clattered on the table. Endersby moved like a man starving on a desert island. To be precise, he lurched at the food, and with fork and spoon ate his supper without a word to his more leisurely companions. Wiping his mouth at the end, Endersby sat up. “We have precious time tonight, Caldwell. We must use rag and string to make up our disguise.”

  “But sir,” replied his faithful sergeant. “You have yet to be astonished at what I have for you in this small envelope.”

  “But what is it, my good man?”

  Sergeant Caldwell handed the soiled, folded paper to his superior.

  “Do you know its contents, Caldwell?”

  “I do, sir. And I have been patient enough with its withholding.”

  “You have held something back?” Endersby cried in amazement.

  “No, indeed, sir. Not held back at all. I was waiting to save for you the finest tidbit.”

  “I do believe it,” grumbled Endersby, somewhat humbled by Caldwell’s assertion. But his heart was leaping with anticipation. “You have locked me out, sir. Let me in, I beg of you.”

  “It is a most singular story,” Caldwell began. “I spent the first hours at the glove sellers near all the great theatres, at Old Drury and Covent Garden, then to the Surrey-side and the Coburg, the Victoria, then back over Waterloo to the King’s, the Italian opera. The answers came in a chorus: never seen the glove before. The leather and canvas palm were poorly sewn, said one; the canvas and leather are cleverly combined, said another. At the theatres themselves, the outfitters for leather could not place the item.